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Electronically Filed
Supreme Court
SCAP-XX-XXXXXXX
26-APR-2022
09:03 AM
Dkt. 17 OP
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF HAWAIʻI
---o0o---
HONOLULU CIVIL BEAT INC.,
Plaintiff-Appellant,
vs.
DEPARTMENT OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL,
Defendant-Appellee.
SCAP-XX-XXXXXXX
APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE FIRST CIRCUIT
(CAAP-XX-XXXXXXX; CASE NO. 1CC161001743)
APRIL 26, 2022
WILSON AND EDDINS, JJ., AND CIRCUIT JUDGE WONG, IN PLACE OF
NAKAYAMA, J., RECUSED; AND RECKTENWALD, C.J., CONCURRING IN PART
AND DISSENTING IN PART, WITH WHOM McKENNA, J., JOINS
OPINION OF THE COURT BY EDDINS, J.
In 2016, the Department of the Attorney General produced an
explosive 555-page report 1 documenting incompetence, deceptive
1 The Report itself contains 555 substantive pages and one blank page;
the Department of the Attorney General also prepared a seven page follow up
report.
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practices, and workplace bullying in the Office of the Auditor
(the Report).
Honolulu Civil Beat, an investigative news organization,
has been trying to get its hands on a copy of that report for
over five years.
We decide whether Hawai‘i’s public information law - the
Uniform Information Practices Act (UIPA) - requires the State AG
to release the Report to Civil Beat.
By and large, it does. Though there are significant
privacy interests in the Report as a “personnel-related” record,
these interests are mostly outweighed by the public’s
overwhelming interest in the Report’s disclosure. There are
summaries of formal personnel records, discussions of minor
policy infractions, and remarks about medical information in the
Report that are exempt from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements.
They may be redacted. The names of rank-and-file employees of
the Office of the Auditor and other interviewees may also be
redacted. But everything else is fair game for Civil Beat: a
smattering of redactions within a government record cannot
shield the entire thing from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements.
I. BACKGROUND
In April 2015, the Hawai‘i Legislature asked the Department
of the Attorney General (the AG or State AG) to investigate the
Office of the Auditor. The legislature made this request after
2
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receiving complaints about three high-ranking officials in the
Office of the Auditor: Acting Auditor Jan Yamane, Deputy Auditor
Rachel Hibbard, and General Counsel and Human Resources Manager
Kathleen Racuya-Markrich (collectively the Subjects).
The State AG investigated. And it compiled a record of its
investigation (the Investigation).
On April 27, 2016, a Civil Beat reporter emailed the State
AG. He referenced the UIPA and asked for “access to or copies
of all final investigative reports related to the state
auditor’s office from Jan. 1, 2015 to present.”
The UIPA provides that “[a]ll government records are open
to public inspection unless access is restricted or closed by
law.” Hawai‘i Revised Statutes (HRS) § 92F-11(a) (2012). It
also exempts several categories of records from this disclosure
mandate. See HRS § 92F-13 (2012).
The State AG denied Civil Beat’s request. It said the
Report was exempt from the UIPA’s disclosure requirement.
Civil Beat sued.
The parties cross-moved for summary judgment.
The circuit court granted the State AG’s motion for summary
judgment and denied Civil Beat’s. The court said the Report was
exempt from the UIPA because it was a confidential communication
3
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between counsel (the State AG) and client (the legislature). 2
Civil Beat appealed. On appeal, we reversed the circuit court.
See Honolulu Civil Beat Inc. v. Dep’t of Attorney Gen. (Civil
Beat I), 146 Hawai‘i 285, 463 P.3d 942 (2020). The Report might
have been prepared at the legislature’s request. But the State
AG hadn’t shown it prepared the Report in the context of an
attorney-client relationship. And, as a result, the Report was
not exempt from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements. Id. at 298,
463 P.3d at 955.
The State AG’s motion for summary judgment had raised two
additional bases for the Report’s nondisclosure that were left
unaddressed by the circuit court’s order. They were:
(1) HRS § 92F-13(3) (the Frustration Exemption) (exempting
from disclosure “[g]overnment records that, by their
nature, must be confidential in order for the
government to avoid the frustration of a legitimate
government function”); and
(2) HRS § 92F-13(1) (the Privacy Exemption) (exempting
from disclosure “[g]overnment records which, if
disclosed, would constitute a clearly unwarranted
2 The court reasoned that since the Report was covered by the statutory
attorney-client privilege, see Hawaiʻi Rules of Evidence Rule 503, it would be
shielded from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements by HRS § 92F-13(4), which
exempts from UIPA disclosure government records that “pursuant to state or
federal law . . . are protected from disclosure.” See also HRS § 626-1
(2016) (enacting the Hawaiʻi Rules of Evidence).
4
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invasion of personal privacy”).
We remanded the case. We instructed the circuit court to
consider whether the Report was shielded from the UIPA’s
disclosure requirements by the Frustration or Privacy
Exemptions. Id. at 299, 463 P.3d at 956.
On remand, the circuit court again granted summary judgment
to the State AG. It held that the Report fell within both the
Frustration and the Privacy Exemptions and was therefore exempt
from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements.
The court said the Report fell within the Frustration
Exception because its disclosure would frustrate the State AG’s
“legitimate government function” of providing legal services to
state agencies.
The court said the Report fell within the Privacy Exemption
because its disclosure would “constitute a clearly unwarranted
invasion of personal privacy.” In reaching this conclusion, the
circuit court found there were significant privacy interests in
the Report because it was both “[i]nformation comprising a
personal recommendation or evaluation,” see HRS § 92F-14(b)(8)
(2012 & Supp. 2015), and “[i]nformation in an agency’s personnel
file,” 3 see HRS § 92F-14(b)(4).
3 The court said that: (1) the Subjects had a significant privacy
interest in the Report as a personal recommendation or evaluation under HRS
§ 92F-14(b)(8); and (2) everyone named in the Report had a significant
privacy interest in it as information in a personnel file under HRS § 92F-
14(b)(4).
5
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The circuit court also concluded that the Report should be
totally withheld, rather than redacted, because the Report could
not be “redacted in a fair manner which would give accurate
meaning” to its contents.
Now, in this second appeal, Civil Beat says the circuit
court got it wrong again. Civil Beat asks us to consider
whether the circuit court erred by holding that the Report may
be withheld from the public under (1) the Frustration Exemption;
and (2) the Privacy Exemption. Civil Beat also asks us to
consider (3) “[w]hether the circuit court erred by holding that
the AG investigation report could not be disclosed in redacted
form.”
II. DISCUSSION
Under the UIPA, “[a]ll government records are open to
public inspection unless access is restricted or closed by law.”
HRS § 92F-11(a). But there are several statutory exemptions.
See HRS § 92F-13. And if a record falls within one of these
exemptions, the government doesn’t have to disclose it. Id.
Two exemptions are at issue in this case: the Frustration
Exemption (HRS § 92F-13(3)) and the Privacy Exemption (HRS
§ 92F-13(1)).
The UIPA “contains a strong presumption in favor of public
disclosure of government records.” Civil Beat I, 146 Hawai‘i at
293, 463 P.3d at 950 (citing HRS §§ 92F-2 (2012), 92F-11(a)).
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And its exemptions are “narrowly construed with all doubts
resolved in favor of disclosure.” OIP Op. Ltr. No. 95-12 at 8
(May 8, 1995).
An agency relying on a UIPA exemption has the burden of
showing that nondisclosure is justified. HRS § 92F-15(c) (2012)
(“The agency has the burden of proof to establish justification
for nondisclosure.”).
Here, the State AG has not met its burden of showing that
the Report’s nondisclosure is justified under either the
Frustration Exemption or the Privacy Exemption.
A. The Frustration Exemption
The analysis under the Frustration Exemption – which
exempts records “that, by their nature, must be confidential in
order for the government to avoid the frustration of a
legitimate government function” - is straightforward. Both the
trial court’s post-remand order and the State AG’s opening brief
assert that the AG’s ability to provide legal services will be
frustrated by the Report’s disclosure. This assertion is
incompatible with our holding in Civil Beat I. See 146 Hawai‘i
at 295, 463 P.3d at 952 (holding, on the same record before us
now, that the AG “failed to prove that it was acting in a
lawyer-client relationship with the legislature with regard to
[the Report]”). The record contains no explanation of how the
Report’s disclosure could possibly frustrate the State AG’s
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ability to provide legal services given that, per Civil Beat I,
the Attorney General wasn’t providing the State “legal services”
when it investigated the Office of the Auditor or prepared the
Report. 4
The State AG has not advanced any other arguments about why
the Report’s release would frustrate a legitimate government
function. The AG’s burden of showing how the Report’s release
would frustrate a legitimate government function, see HRS § 92F-
15(c), has not been met. 5 The Frustration Exemption, then,
cannot justify the Report’s nondisclosure.
B. The Privacy Exemption
The Privacy Exemption analysis is more complicated.
The Privacy Exemption applies to “[g]overnment records
which, if disclosed, would constitute a clearly unwarranted
invasion of personal privacy.” HRS § 92F-13(1). Under HRS
4 Our ruling will have no impact on the protections afforded to records
the State AG can show are confidential lawyer-client communications. The
Attorney General contends that its ability to provide state agencies legal
services would be handicapped by the Report’s disclosure. But this
contention is nonsensical. Anytime the State AG conducts an investigation
while providing legal services to a state agency, it may accurately tell its
interlocutors that their responses would be confidential. Government
agencies, likewise, may continue to request legal services from the State AG
with full confidence that confidential attorney-client communications will be
shielded from UIPA disclosure. See Civil Beat I, 146 Hawai‘i at 293-95, 463
P.3d at 950-52.
5 See Peer News LLC v. City & County of Honolulu (Peer News II), 143
Hawai‘i 472, 487, 431 P.3d 1245, 1260 (2018) (stating that an agency seeking
to withhold a record under the Frustration Exemption must “demonstrate a
connection between disclosure of the specific record and the likely
frustration of a legitimate government function, including by clearly
describing the particular frustration and providing concrete information
indicating that the identified outcome is the likely result of disclosure”).
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§ 92F-14(a), “[d]isclosure of a government record shall not
constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy if
the public interest in disclosure outweighs the privacy interest
of the individual.”
A two-part test governs our determination of whether a
given record’s disclosure would “constitute a clearly
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
First, the court decides whether there is a “significant
privacy interest rooted in statute or the constitution.” See
Org. of Police Officers v. City & Cty. of Honolulu, 149 Hawai‘i
492, 504, 494 P.3d 1225, 1237 (2021).
If the court finds a constitutionally or statutorily
“significant” privacy interest, it balances that interest
against the public’s interest in disclosure. If the significant
privacy interest is stronger than the public’s interest in
disclosure, the record’s disclosure constitutes “a clearly
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy” and the record falls
within the Privacy Exemption. If, however, the public’s
interest in disclosure is stronger than the privacy interests at
issue, the record is not exempt and must be disclosed. See id.
at 516, 494 P.3d at 1249.
The analysis is easier if there’s no “significant privacy
interest rooted in statute or the constitution;” in that case,
even “a scintilla of public interest in disclosure will preclude
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a finding of a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal
privacy.” Id. at 504, 494 P.3d at 1237 (cleaned up).
1. The Report, as a whole, does not fall within the
Privacy Exemption
The circuit court held that everyone named in the Report
has a significant privacy interest in it under HRS § 92F-
14(b)(4), which recognizes a significant privacy interest in
“[i]nformation in an agency’s personnel file.” 6 It also held
that those privacy interests outweigh the public’s interest in
the Report’s disclosure and that, therefore, the Report is
covered by the Privacy Exemption.
We agree with the circuit court that there are significant
privacy interests in the Report under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4): the
Report, as a whole, is a “personnel-related” record in which its
Subjects have significant privacy interests under HRS § 92F-
14(b)(4). But, we hold that because the Subjects’ significant
privacy interests in the Report as personnel-related information
are outweighed by the public’s interest in disclosure, the
6 The circuit court also found that Yamane and her managerial staff had
significant privacy interests in the Report under HRS § 92F-14(b)(8), which
recognizes a significant privacy interest in “[i]nformation comprising a
personal recommendation or evaluation.” We disagree. The State AG prepared
the Report to document its investigation into the veracity of a particular
set of personnel-related allegations. This provenance is way different than
that of most workplace “personal evaluations” or performance reviews. And
the Report explores themes and subject matter that would be out of place in
an individual “personal evaluation.” Because the Report is not a “personal
recommendation or evaluation,” there are no significant privacy interests in
it under HRS § 92F-14(b)(8).
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Report, as a whole, is not covered by the Privacy Exemption.
a. Defining the Scope of the Significant Privacy
Interest Recognized by HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)
HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) creates a “significant privacy interest”
in “[i]nformation in an agency’s personnel file.” 7
This privacy interest extends to information that, though
not physically located in any agency’s personnel files, is, in
essence, a personnel record. See OIP Op. Ltr. No. 98-05 at 20
(Nov. 24, 1998) (concluding that an administrative investigation
7 The significant privacy interest in personnel-related information found
in HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) is one of ten examples of significant privacy interests
enumerated in HRS § 92F-14(b). But this list of examples is not exhaustive.
The UIPA implements article I, section 6 of the Hawai‘i Constitution.
See Org. of Police Officers, 149 Hawaii at 510, 494 P.3d at 1243 (describing
UIPA as a law implementing article I, section 6). Under article I, section
6, “[t]he right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be
infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.” We have held
that “the privacy right protected by the ‘informational privacy’ prong of
article I, section 6 is the right to keep confidential information which is
‘highly personal and intimate.’” State of Hawai‘i Org. of Police Officers
(SHOPO) v. Soc’y of Prof’l Journalists-Univ. of Hawai‘i Chapter, 83 Hawai‘i
378, 398, 927 P.2d 386, 406 (1996)). As the court in SHOPO recognized,
“highly personal and intimate information” is analogous to that implicated by
the invasion of privacy tort, which encompasses information about “[s]exual
relations,” “family quarrels, many unpleasant or disgraceful or humiliating
illnesses, most intimate personal letters, most details of a [person’s] life
in [their] home, and some of [their] past history that [they] would rather
forget.” Id. (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 652D cmt. B (Am.
Law Inst. 1977)).
Because of the constitutionally significant privacy interest in “highly
intimate and personal” information, HRS § 92F-14(b)’s list of “examples” of
significant privacy interests is not exhaustive. HRS § 92F-14(b) does not
recognize information about, for example, family quarrels, as a category in
which individuals have a significant privacy interest. But individuals
nonetheless have a significant privacy interest in information about their
family quarrels because of article I, section 6’s protections. The fact that
HRS § 92F-14(b) contains “examples” of information in which a person has a
“significant” privacy interest thus does not imply that a court may create
statutorily significant privacy interests beyond those recognized by HRS
§ 92F-14(b). It merely reflects the legislature’s recognition that it is
this court’s job to determine the scope of the constitutional right to
informational privacy.
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report kept outside an employee’s personnel file is “akin to the
information maintained in a personnel file” in part because
“[a]n administrative investigation report often is the only
investigation with regard to personnel action and discipline,
and it provides the basis for any personnel action taken”); OIP
Op. Ltr. No. 95-7 (March 28, 1995). Thus, in the UIPA context,
the term “personnel-related information” refers to information
that, regardless of its physical location, is akin to that
maintained by an agency in its personnel files.
In considering the proper scope of the significant privacy
interest created by HRS § 92F-14(b)(4), it is helpful to keep in
mind that the noun “personnel” has two meanings. It means
“[t]he department of human resources in an organization;” and it
may also refer to “[t]he people employed by or active in an
organization, business, or service.” See Personnel, The
American Heritage Dictionary (5th ed. 2015).
When HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) refers to “information in an
agency’s personnel file,” it is talking about information in
files maintained by the agency’s human resources department, and
not about all information in any way related to “[t]he people
employed by or active in an organization, business, or service.”
By extension, when we recognize a significant privacy interest
in “personnel-related information,” we are describing a
significant privacy interest in information related, or similar,
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to that you would find in the files of a human resources
department. 8
8 The dissent, in contrast, advocates a definition of “information in an
agency’s personnel file” that operationalizes personnel’s other meaning. In
the dissent’s account, if information has any connection to the “everyday
work activities” of State employees, then those employees have a significant
privacy interest in it. See dissent at 9 (“UIPA’s text recognizes that State
employees retain a significant privacy interest in their everyday work
activities . . . .”)
There are major problems with this approach.
First, and most fundamentally, it is at odds with the plain text of HRS
§ 92F-14(b)(4), which uses “personnel” to refer to an agency’s human
resources department and not as a synonym for “employees.” HRS § 92F-
14(b)(4) recognizes a significant privacy interest in “[i]nformation in an
agency’s personnel file, or applications, nominations, recommendations, or
proposals for public employment or appointment to a governmental
position.” Personnel files, job applications, nominations, and proposals for
public employment are all things you would find in an agency’s HR
files. Nothing in the plain text of this provision suggests the legislature
is using “information in an agency’s personnel file” to refer to all
information about the day-to-day work of an agency’s personnel.
Second, it makes no sense given the common understanding of the term
“personnel file,” which refers to a file that both: (1) is specific to a
particular person; and (2) contains a relatively narrow range of documents
that are used to identify, and make employment decisions about, the
particular employee they describe. See Dep’t of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S.
352, 377 (1976) (describing personnel files as containing personal data
about, for example where someone was born, the names of their parents, their
address history, and their educational records); see also Elkin Tribune, Inc.
v. Yadkin Cty. Bd. of Cty. Comm’rs, 417 S.E.2d 465, 466 (N.C. 1992)
(observing that statutory definition of personnel file as “consist[ing] of
any information in any form gathered by the [employer] with respect to that
employee and, by way of illustration but not limitation, relating to his [or
her] application, selection or nonselection, performance, promotions,
demotions, transfers, suspension and other disciplinary actions, evaluation
forms, leave, salary, and termination of employment” comports with common
understanding of term “personnel file” (emphases added)); Oregonian Publ’g
Co. v. Portland Sch. Dist. No. 1J, 987 P.2d 480, 484 (Or. 1999) (en banc)
(observing that “‘personnel files’ would usually include information about
[an employee’s] education and qualifications for employment, job performance,
evaluations, disciplinary matters or other information useful in making
employment decisions regarding an employee”).
Third, it is difficult to square with other examples in HRS § 92F-
14(b), which recognize significant privacy interests in discrete and
relatively narrow categories of information like “[i]nformation comprising a
personal recommendation or evaluation” and “[i]nformation relating to
eligibility for social services or welfare benefits or to the determination
of benefit levels.” These are not sweeping genres akin to information about
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b. The Report is “personnel-related information” in
which the Subjects alone have a significant
privacy interest under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)
The circuit court held that everyone named in the Report
has a significant privacy in it under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4). We
disagree. Only the Subjects have a significant privacy interest
in the Report as a whole.
The analysis as to whether any particular individual has a
“significant” privacy interest in a record requires more than a
finding that the person is referenced in the record and that the
record, as a whole, contains information covered by article I,
section 6 or one of HRS § 92F-14(b)’s examples. A record
implicates a person’s significant privacy interests when it
contains particular types of information about them. A person’s
privacy interest does not turn on the nature of the record as a
whole. Cf. Rose, 425 U.S. at 374 (recognizing that courts
deciding FOIA challenges must “look beneath the label on a file
or record when the withholding of information is challenged”
(cleaned up)). It turns, rather, on whether a record’s
information about them implicates their personal significant
privacy interests.
government employees’ “everyday work activities.” See dissent at 9. There
is no reason to think that the legislature - in recognizing a significant
privacy interest in “[i]information in an agency’s personnel file” - intended
to bestow information about state workers’ lunchtime habits and collegial
dynamics with the same level of protection afforded to social security
numbers and medical records.
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This analysis makes intuitive sense in the context of
personnel files, which, by their nature, concern a particular
person. See Milner v. Dep’t of Navy, 562 U.S. 562, 570 (2011)
(explaining that “the common and congressional meaning of
‘personnel file’ is the file showing, for example, where an
employee was born, the names of his parents, where he has lived
from time to time, his school records, results of examinations,
and evaluations of his work performance” (cleaned up) (citing
Rose, 425 U.S., at 377)); see also Rose, 425 U.S. at 376 (citing
a House Report that describes FOIA’s exemption for personnel
files as “intended to cover detailed Government records on an
individual which can be identified as applying to that
individual” (emphases added) (cleaned up)).
Here, the Report is a personnel-related record in which not
just one person, but three people (the Subjects), have a
significant privacy interest under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4).
As a preliminary matter, there are two reasons why the
Report is “personnel-related information,” by which we mean the
type of information you would expect to find in files maintained
by an agency’s personnel department.
First, the Report documents an investigation launched in
response to complaints from Office of the Auditor employees
concerning, among other things, harassment and a hostile work
environment at the Office of the Auditor. These are classic
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human resources concerns. And the Investigation – with its
employee interviews, three Subjects, and review of personnel
policies and procedures, training records, and staff assignments
– is a classic HR investigation.
Second, the State AG initiated the Investigation at the
request of the legislature, which can hire and fire the auditor.
And following the Investigation, the AG gave the Report to the
legislature so that it could determine “what action needed to be
taken if any” in response to the Report’s findings. The
relationship between the legislature and the auditor isn’t that
of a typical “employer” and “employee.” See Civil Beat I, 146
Hawai‘i at 297, 463 P.3d at 954 (describing the auditor’s
constitutional role in relationship to the legislature). But
the fact that a unit of government with power over the auditor
requested and directed the Investigation weighs in favor of
treating the Report as “personnel-related information” in which
there may be significant privacy interests under HRS § 92F-
14(b)(4).
So the Report is a personnel-related record. But whose?
The Investigation was launched in response to complaints
about the Subjects, in particular. And the Report’s scope and
contents foreground the Subjects, in particular. Though there’s
no evidence the Office of the Auditor maintained the Report in
Yamane, Hibbard, or Racuya-Markrich’s personnel files, the
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Report would not be out of place there. It is, as a whole, a
document of the sort an employer might use in making employment
decisions about the Subjects. Cf. Wakefield Teachers Ass’n v.
Sch. Comm. of Wakefield, 731 N.E.2d 63, 67 (Mass. 2000)
(describing the “core categories of personnel information” as
“useful in making employment decisions” about a particular
employee (cleaned up)). Thus, with respect to each of the three
Subjects, the Report, as a whole, is personnel-related
information. So all three of the Subjects (who, as their
moniker implies, are the Report’s subjects) have a significant
privacy interest in the Report under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4).
The Report does mention Office of the Auditor workers other
than the Subjects. 9 But these folks are not its focus. The
Report was not drafted because of them; it does not focus on
them; and, with limited exceptions, see infra sections
9 Some of the Office of the Auditor employees mentioned in the Report
received assurance of confidentiality from the State AG. But this fact does
not impact our analysis of whether these interviewees have significant
privacy interests in the Report. The State AG cannot override the UIPA’s
disclosure requirements by promising interviewees confidentiality. As we
explained in SHOPO, “the virtually unanimous weight of authority holds that
an agreement of confidentiality cannot take precedence over a statute
mandating disclosure.” SHOPO, 83 Hawai‘i at 405–06, 927 P.2d at 413–14. See
also Washington Post Co. v. U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Servs., 690 F.2d
252, 263 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (“[T]o allow the government to make documents
exempt by the simple means of promising confidentiality would subvert FOIA’s
disclosure mandate.”); OIP Op. Ltr. No. 01-04 at 7 (Oct. 29, 2001)
(“[A]gencies should not make blanket assurances of confidentiality.
Investigators should always ensure that any such promises they make are
appropriate, because if they are made in violation of the UIPA, witness
identities and their statements would be subject to disclosure.”).
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II(B)(2)(a) & (b), it does not contain information of the sort
the Office of the Auditor would use in employment-related
decisions about them. The Report, with its hundreds of pages
about the Subjects, would be out of place in any one of the non-
Subjects’ personnel files. So the Report is not these
employees’ personnel-related information. 10 And, by extension,
they do not have a significant privacy interest in the Report
10 Nothing in HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)(B) suggests that all information
concerning workplace investigations is necessarily the “personnel-related
information” of every single participant in those investigations. The
dissent’s contention to the contrary rests on a misreading of HRS § 92F-
14(b)(4)(B).
HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) recognizes a significant privacy interest in
“[i]nformation in an agency’s personnel file.” Subsection (B) contains an
exception to that general rule. It outlines limited circumstances in which
there is no significant privacy interest in five types of information
concerning “employment misconduct that results in an employee’s suspension or
discharge.”
The dissent takes this very narrow exception and argues that it stands
for the general propositions that: (1) the UIPA “specifically provides for
individual privacy interests” in employment-misconduct investigations; and
(2) every employee named in a document describing a workplace misconduct
investigation has a significant privacy interest in that document. See
dissent at 13 (discussing HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)(B) and claiming that “in
addition to protecting personnel-related information in general, UIPA
specifically provides for individual privacy interests in employment-
misconduct investigations” and that through HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)(B) the
legislature “recognized within UIPA’s text that employment investigations
touch on sensitive areas implicating significant privacy interests for both
subjects and witnesses”).
Neither of these contentions has any merit. And neither draws any
support from HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)(B). HRS § 92F-14(b)(4)(B) indicates that,
unsurprisingly, the legislature anticipated that government agencies’
personnel files would sometimes contain information about employee
misconduct. But that doesn’t mean all information in any way connected to a
workplace misconduct investigation is automatically “personnel-related
information.” And it definitely doesn’t support the conclusion that everyone
named in a report describing workplace misconduct has a significant privacy
interest in it.
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under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4). 11,12,13
11 The dissent justifies its conclusion that the Report is the non-
Subjects’ personnel-related information by arguing that these interviewees
ought to have a significant privacy interest in the Report. The dissent says
it’s not fair the UIPA gives the Subjects — who were accused of misconduct —
a “significant” privacy interest in the Report while denying the same to the
non-Subjects, who did nothing wrong. See dissent at 12. This argument is
intuitively appealing, but the dissent’s engagement with this normative
question is not appropriate: it is the legislature’s job, not ours, to weigh
policy considerations and determine the scope of the Privacy Exemption. See
Peer News II, 143 Hawai‘i at 489, 431 P.3d at 1262; State v. Smith, 103
Hawai‘i 228, 233, 81 P.3d 408, 413 (2003).
12 The dissent says that OIP Opinion Letter Number 98-05 supports its
contention that everyone named in the Report has a significant privacy
interest in it as a personnel-related record. It does not. That opinion
letter – which dealt with an administrative investigation, not a criminal one
— did not consider at all the issue before us now: whether the witnesses in
an administrative investigation have a significant privacy interest in that
investigation as personnel-related information. In fact, Opinion Letter
Number 98-05 directly undermines the dissent’s claim that witnesses in an
administrative investigation have a significant privacy interest in it under
HRS § 92F-14(b)(4). In Opinion Letter Number 98-05, the OIP presumed that
only the subject of an administrative investigation could have a significant
privacy interest in it as personnel-related information. See OIP Op. Ltr.
No. 98-05 at 20-21 (separately analyzing whether the subject employee of an
investigative report has a significant privacy interest in it as personnel-
related information and concluding that “[w]hen there is no discharge
resulting from employee misconduct, the subject employee has a significant
privacy interest in the information contained in [an investigative affairs
report about the misconduct]” (emphasis added)). OIP Opinion Letter Number
98-05 addressed the question of whether the subject of an administrative
investigation report could have a significant privacy interest in it as
personnel-related information. But it didn’t bother with the question of
whether complainants and witnesses could have a “personnel-information”
significant privacy interest in the same report. Because it was obvious they
could not.
Opinion Letter Number 98-05 did find that witnesses in administrative
investigations have a significant privacy interest in information about their
identity within internal affairs reports. See id. at 19. But nothing about
that limited conclusion supports the dissent’s contention that the non-
Subjects have significant privacy interest in everything within the Report.
13 Our holding that the non-Subjects named in the Report do not have a
significant privacy interest in it under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) is limited and
technical. We are not holding that the non-Subjects’ privacy interests in
the Report are unimportant, insignificant, or trivial. We are simply holding
that those privacy interests are not the sort of privacy interests recognized
by HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) as “significant.”
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c. The public has a strong interest in the Report’s
full disclosure
The Report’s full disclosure would advance three distinct
public interests.
First, the public’s interest in assessing how the Office of
the Auditor carries out its official duties. See OIP Op. Ltr.
No. 90–17, at 7 (April 24, 1990) (Recognizing that the UIPA
reflects citizens’ right to know “what their government is up
to” (quoting U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for
Freedom of Press, 489 U.S. 749, 773 (1989))). The Report’s
release would advance this public interest by “shed[ding] light
upon the workings of government.” See OIP Op. Ltr. No. 04-07 at
7 (Mar. 25, 2004).
Second, the public’s interest – distinct from its general
interest in oversight of government operations - in “monitoring
the conduct of individual government employees or officials.”
Peer News LLC v. City & County of Honolulu (Peer News I), 138
Hawai‘i 53, 79, 376 P.3d 1, 27 (2016) (Pollack, J., concurring).
The Report’s release would advance this interest by allowing the
public to assess whether the Subjects conscientiously and
ethically carried out their respective duties while working in
the Office of the Auditor.
Third, the public’s interest in assessing the manner in
which the government investigates complaints and allegations of
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wrongdoing. As we explained in Organization of Police Officers:
The public’s interest extends to those investigating
misconduct and those accused of misconduct: the public
should be assured that both the activity of public
employees suspected of wrongdoing and the conduct of those
public employees who investigate the suspects is open to
public scrutiny.
149 Hawai‘i at 516, 494 P.3d at 1249 (cleaned up). The Report’s
release would advance this interest by allowing the public to
understand how the State AG conceptualized and executed the
Investigation.
d. The public’s interest in the Report’s disclosure
outweighs the Subjects’ and non-Subjects’ privacy
interests in the Report as a whole
Because the Subjects have significant privacy interests in
the Report as a whole under HRS Section 92F-14(b)(4), our
determination as to whether the State AG may withhold the whole
Report under the Privacy Exemption hinges on whether the
public’s interest in the Report’s disclosure outweighs those
interests. See HRS § 92F-14(a). (Since the non-Subjects’
privacy interests in the Report as a whole are not statutorily
or constitutionally significant, they are not subject to HRS
Section 92F-14(a) balancing.)
The HRS Section 92F-14(a) balancing test is context-
specific; no multi-factor test could anticipate every
potentially-relevant consideration. That said, certain dynamics
are routinely at issue when a government employee’s significant
privacy interests in a record are balanced against the public’s
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interest in the same record’s disclosure. The OIP has
identified five factors relevant to HRS Section 92F-14(a)
balancing. They are:
(1) the government employee’s rank;
(2) the “[d]egree of wrongdoing and strength of
evidence against the employee”;
(3) whether there are other ways to obtain the
information;
(4) “[w]hether the information sought sheds light on a
government activity”; and
(5) “[w]hether the information is related to job
function, or is of a personal nature.”
See OIP Op. Ltr. No. 10-03 at 6-7 (Oct. 5, 2010).
These non-exclusive factors are a nice starting point for
HRS Section 92F-14(a) balancing. 14 And here, each factor
supports the Report’s disclosure.
The Subjects - Acting Auditor Jan Yamane, Deputy Auditor
Rachel Hibbard, and General Counsel and HR Manager Kathleen
Racuya-Markrich - were the Office of the Auditor’s top brass,
not line auditors or administrative staff.
And the Report is damning: it provides strong evidence of
unethical and unprofessional conduct in the Office of the
Auditor. The Report contains information about: (1) the Office
14 As we explained in Organization of Police Officers, these factors
“might be useful or relevant depending on the circumstances of the individual
case” but “they are neither necessary nor dispositive.” 149 Hawai‘i at 517,
494 P.3d at 1250.
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of the Auditor’s exaggeration and sensationalizing of its
findings; (2) the Office of the Auditor’s fabrication of
findings about auditee agencies; (3) the inexperience and
incompetence of the Office of the Auditor’s leadership; (4) the
Office of the Auditor’s alleged failure to complete an audit it
was required, by law, to complete; (5) the Office of the
Auditor’s efforts to artificially inflate the number of audit
reports it produced; and (6) the toxic workplace at the Office
of the Auditor.
The third factor examines “whether the government is the
only means for obtaining the desired information.” OIP Op. Ltr.
No. 10-03 at 7. The government is Civil Beat’s only option for
getting the Report. This factor supports disclosure.
The fourth factor also favors the Report’s disclosure. The
Report spotlights the workings of the Office of the Auditor. In
Peer News I, we recognized that “‘the appropriate concern of the
public as to the proper performance of public duty is to be
given great weight’ when balanced against competing privacy
interests.” 138 Hawai‘i at 73, 376 P.3d at 21 (quoting SHOPO, 83
Hawai‘i at 399, 927 P.2d at 407).
Fifth, none of the information in the Report concerns the
Subjects’ personal affairs. All of it in some way connects to
their official work in the Office of the Auditor. The Report
contains some colorful descriptions of the work environment at
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the Office of the Auditor. But this is largely a function of
the manner in which the State AG conducted the Investigation.
The AG’s investigator would ask interviewees if they had heard
about various incidents of harassment within the Office of the
Auditor. It is unsurprising that some of the responses he got
contained commentary on colleagues’ interpersonal dynamics.
Nothing in the Report is purely personal, though: there’s no
“gossip” about the Subjects’ (or anyone else’s) personal lives,
just candid descriptions of a toxic workplace environment.
Because the information in the Report relates to the Subjects’
job functions, not their personal affairs, this factor favors
the public’s interest in disclosure.
The datedness of the record is also relevant to HRS § 92F-
14(a) balancing. Here, the Report dates to spring 2016 and it
describes an investigation that happened about six years ago, in
2015 and early 2016. The record’s age cuts both ways. The
Subjects’ “significant privacy interests” in the Report have
waned over time. See McDonnell v. United States, 4 F.3d 1227,
1256 (3d Cir. 1993) (recognizing that individuals’ privacy
interests may become “diluted by the passage of time”). At the
same time, the public’s interest in the Report’s disclosure –
though still substantial - is lower than it would be if Yamane
were still Acting Auditor. Cf. Peer News I, 138 Hawai‘i at 82,
376 P.3d at 30 (Pollack, J., concurring) (recognizing that
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public interest in holding a police officer accountable for his
conduct “may be significantly diminished if the officer is
retired, was subsequently acquitted of the conduct, or is no
longer serving as an armed officer”). On balance, the Report’s
age supports disclosure.
A final factor that informs our analysis is the Office of
the Auditor’s importance: this highly-visible and
constitutionally-established office is a first line of defense
against government inefficiency - or worse. See Hawaii
Constitutional Convention Studies, Article VI: Taxation and
Finance, Legislative Reference Bureau, at 70-78 (June 1978).
The critical role the Office of the Auditor plays in promoting
trust and confidence in government enhances the public’s
interest in the Report.
We conclude that the State AG has not met its burden of
showing that the Privacy Exemption wholesale shields the Report
from disclosure: the public’s interests in the Report’s
disclosure outweigh the Subjects’ significant privacy interests
in the Report as a personnel-related record. And because there
is more than a “scintilla” of public interest in the Report’s
disclosure, the non-Subjects’ non-significant privacy interests
in information within the Report are also eclipsed.
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2. Four categories of information within the Report come
within the Privacy Exemption
The fact that the Report is not wholesale shielded from
disclosure by the Privacy Exemption, does not mean that none of
the information within it is covered by the Privacy Exemption.
We must consider each subset of information within the Report to
determine whether its release would result in a clearly
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. Cf. Mead Data Cent.,
Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of the Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 261 n.55
(D.C. Cir. 1977) (observing that “the focus of the FOIA is
information, not documents as a whole”).
There are four categories of information in the Report
that, if disclosed, would “constitute a clearly unwarranted
invasion of personal privacy.” They are: (1) summaries of the
Office of the Auditor’s personnel records; (2) findings and
discussions concerning minor policy infractions committed by
non-Subjects; (3) the names of interviewees and Office of the
Auditor employees mentioned in the Report; and (4) information
about individuals’ medical conditions. These four categories of
information fall within the Privacy Exemption and may be
redacted from the Report.
a. Summaries of the Office of the Auditor’s
personnel files fall within the Privacy Exemption
As part of the Investigation, the State AG reviewed records
maintained in the Office of the Auditor’s personnel files. The
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Report summarizes some of these records. For example, it
describes in depth a demotion letter and several formal
performance appraisals.
HRS § 92F-14(b)(4) does not confer a significant privacy
interest in every offhanded reference to a personnel record or
matter. Yet those whose personnel records are reviewed in
detail by the Report do have a significant privacy interest in
those summaries, just as they would in the records themselves.
The public’s interest in these summaries is, in contrast,
low. They may shed light on certain government workers’
performance, but they add little to the Report’s description of
the Office of the Auditor, at large.
The public’s minimal interest in the Report’s summaries of
personnel records is outweighed by the Office of the Auditor
employees’ significant privacy interests in those discussions.
The Report’s summaries of formal personnel records are therefore
exempt from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements under HRS § 92F-
13(1).
b. Findings and discussions exclusively concerned
with minor misconduct by non-Subjects
The Report contains two findings concerning minor
misconduct by a non-Subject. And there are scattered sentences
within the Report that exclusively concern non-Subjects’
compliance, or lack thereof, with various Office of the Auditor
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polices. (For example, the leave and computer use policies.)
These lines are diffuse throughout the Report. But collectively
they, and the two findings referenced above, are, “akin to the
information maintained in a personnel file.” 15 See OIP Op. Ltr.
No. 98-05 at 20. So the non-Subjects whose compliance or non-
compliance with workplace policies is addressed in the Report
have a significant privacy interest in those discussions and
findings under HRS § 92F-14(b)(4). 16
The public’s interest in learning about minor policy
violations committed by low-ranking Office of the Auditor
employees over six years ago is low. So even though this
information does concern public employees’ performance of their
official duties, the public’s interest in its disclosure does
not outweigh the non-Subjects’ significant privacy interests in
the information. Thus, to the limited extent the Report
contains findings and discussions that are exclusively concerned
with non-Subjects’ policy infractions, that information is
exempt from the UIPA’s disclosure requirements under HRS § 92F-
15 Formal summaries describing an employee’s compliance or non-compliance
with written workplace policies – unlike lengthy qualitative accounts of
office grudges or written descriptions of employees’ routine interactions and
relative popularity – are the type of documents one would expect to find in
the files of an agency’s personnel department.
16 This privacy interest encompasses only information directly and
exclusively concerned with the issue of an individual’s compliance or non-
compliance with an established workplace policy. Non-Subjects do not have
significant privacy interests in, for example, discussions about the
Subjects’ uneven or unfair implementation of those policies.
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13(1).
c. Interviewees’ names – but not Subjects’ - fall
within the Privacy Exemption
The public does not gain better insight into the workings
of the Office of the Auditor by learning the identities of those
interviewed or mentioned in the Report: it lacks even a trace of
interest in this information. See OIP Op. Ltr. No. 98-05 at 18
(“[T]here is little or no public interest in the disclosure of
the information which identifies witnesses and complainants.”);
OIP Op. Ltr. No. 10-03 at 5 (“[T]he public interest in shedding
light on the agency’s operations is generally served by
disclosure of the nature of alleged misconduct and how the
agency responded to it, without the name of the concerned
employee and other details that could reasonably lead to the
employee’s identification.”); Cf. Albuquerque Publ’g Co. v.
U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 726 F.Supp. 851, 856 (D.D.C. 1989)
(observing that the names of third parties associated with Drug
Enforcement Administration investigation are “irrelevant” to
question of how DEA conducts its investigations).
The public has no interest in knowing the identities of
those interviewed and mentioned in the Report. So even though
the non-Subjects do not have a significant privacy interest in
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the Report as a whole, the disclosure of their names 17 would be a
clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. 18
The same is not true with respect to the Subjects’ names:
the public’s interest in monitoring the conduct of the Office of
the Auditor’s managerial staff outweighs any privacy interests
the Subjects may have in the non-disclosure of their identities.
See Peer News I, 138 Hawai‘i at 80, 376 P.3d at 28 (Pollack, J.,
concurring) (quoting OIP Op. Ltr. No. 98-05 at 21 for the
proposition that “[c]ourts have identified the public interest
in disclosure of the identities of employees as one which lies
in holding those public officials accountable for their
conduct”). The Subjects’ names, then, are not shielded from
17 The Report also contains information such as job titles and references
to individuals’ professional history that – though not as directly
identifying as a name – might still enable those intimately familiar with the
inner workings of the Office of the Auditor in the mid-2010s to connect the
dots on who’s who even with the redactions. This information is “identifying
information.” See Rose, 425 U.S. at 380 (stating that “what constitutes
identifying information . . . must be weighed . . . from the vantage of those
who would have been familiar” with the matter). And in many cases involving
“significant” privacy interests, its disclosure could “constitute a clearly
unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” But that is not the case here.
While the public has no interest in knowing interviewees’ identities, it does
have a cognizable interest in helpful contextualizing information about
interviewees’ positions. Because of this public interest in the identifying
information and the non-Subject employees’ lack of a significant privacy
right in it, the disclosure of this information would not constitute a
clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
18 Because there is not a trace of public interest in knowing the non-
Subjects’ names, our conclusion that these names should be redacted is fully
consistent with our holding that the non-Subjects do not have a significant
privacy interest in the Report. See Org. of Police Officers, 149 Hawai‘i at
504, 494 P.3d at 1237 (explaining that information in which there is zero
public interest may fall within the Privacy Exemption even if there are no
significant privacy interests in it). The dissent’s contention to the
contrary, see dissent at 18 n.7, is puzzling.
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UIPA disclosure by the Privacy Exemption.
d. The Report’s discussions of individuals’ medical
conditions, disabilities, and bodies fall within
the Privacy Exemption
The Report documents several allegations of harassment or
adverse treatment based on perceived disability or sickness.
These references are information “relating to [a] medical . . .
condition.” See HRS § 92F-14(b)(1). Under HRS Section 92F-
14(b)(1), this category of information is one in which
individuals may have a significant privacy interest.
An individual’s privacy interest in, for example, a
colleague’s vague reference to “medical issues” may be lower
than their interest in more clinical health information. But
the individuals whose disabilities, health, and bodies are
discussed – even in passing – by the Report have a “significant
privacy interest” in those discussions.
The public interest in learning about the few allegations
in the Report concerning medical conditions is very low. This
information doesn’t shed light on a government activity. And it
implicates personal, rather than professional concerns.
Given these considerations, significant privacy interests
outweigh the public’s interest in the disclosure of information
concerning health, disability, and body size. Disclosing this
information would be a “clearly unwarranted invasion of personal
privacy.” See HRS § 92F-13(1). This small subset of
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information in the Report that relates to individuals’ medical
conditions is thus exempt from the UIPA’s disclosure
requirements. See id.
C. The Report should be redacted, not withheld
The Attorney General contends that because it would be
impossible to segregate disclosable from non-disclosable
information in the Report, redaction will not do. The entire
Report must be withheld.
The redactions allowed by this opinion are narrow. But
even if they were far more widespread, they would not justify
the Report’s nondisclosure.
The UIPA is intended to, among other things, “[p]rovide for
accurate, relevant, timely, and complete government records” and
“[e]nhance governmental accountability through a general policy
of access to government records.” HRS §§ 92F-2(2), (3). These
aims would be undercut if the presence of redactable information
within a record could justify its total nondisclosure. When
some, but not all, of a record is exempt from UIPA disclosure,
the record may be entirely withheld only if the permissible
redactions are so extensive that what’s left is an
incomprehensible mishmash of blacked-out paragraphs, scattered
words, and punctuation. If the unredactable material within a
given record conveys information, it must be disclosed.
Here, the information within the Report concerning
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individuals’ names, personnel records, and medical conditions
can be “readily detected and redacted from the [Report] without
rendering the remaining [Report] information meaningless.” See
OIP Op. Ltr. No. 09-02 at 5 (Sept. 9, 2009). These redactions
thus do not provide any basis for withholding everything else in
the Report. See OIP Op. Ltr. No. F17-02 at 9 (Dec. 8, 2016)
(“An agency cannot use the presence of some protected
information . . . to justify a wholesale redaction of all
information.”).
III. CONCLUSION
The State AG has not met its burden of showing that the
Report, by and large, comes within a UIPA exemption. So
regarding the vast majority of the Report, the UIPA’s
presumption favoring disclosure has not been overcome.
We vacate the circuit court’s final judgment and remand to
the circuit court.
Within 60 days of the entry of our judgment the State AG
shall present the circuit court with proposed redactions to the
Report.
Descriptions of documents retrieved from Office of the
Auditor’s personnel files and relating to individual employees
may be redacted. Information exclusively about policy
infractions by non-Subject employees may also be redacted.
Any sentences concerning the physical health, disability-
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status, mental illness, or body size of an Office of the Auditor
employee may also be redacted.
Finally, the names of interviewees and non-Subjects
employed by the Office of the Auditor and discussed in the
Report may be redacted.
The circuit court shall review the State AG’s proposed
redactions and shall disallow any that are inconsistent with
this opinion.
Within 90 days of the entry of our judgment the State AG
shall give a copy of the Report - with only the redactions
allowed by this opinion – to Civil Beat.
Robert Brian Black, /s/ Michael D. Wilson
for appellant
/s/ Todd W. Eddins
Stella M.L. Kam, /s/ Paul B.K. Wong
(Patricia Ohara on the briefs)
for appellee
34