Overview
Law360 and The Recorder covered Steptoe’s victory for the California State Bar and all California attorneys in a litigation captioned Sander v. State Bar. The case concerned a UCLA law professor's sweeping public records request for all bar admission data for everyone who applied to take the California Bar Exam from 1972 to the present. Steptoe represented a group of individual California-barred attorneys who intervened in the case to fight against the disclosure of their private information, which the bar promises applicants it will keep confidential. The week-long trial focused on whether there was any way to anonymize the data so that individuals could not be identified from its disclosure, as well as the potential harms resulting from having them identified. On November 7, the court concluded that none of the suggested means of anonymization could meaningfully protect individuals' privacy.
Steptoe’s Meg Kammerud, who represented the intervenors at trial, cheered the decision saying it vindicated important privacy rights: “We are very pleased with the court’s decision, which we think is absolutely the right one. Our clients intervened in this action to protect important privacy rights, and those rights were vindicated today. We will continue to defend these rights should the petitioners attempt to appeal the decision.”
In addition to Ms. Kammerud, Steptoe’s Palo Alto trial team included David Kwasniewski with assistance from Bill Abrams, who started working on the case nine years ago.
The full articles can be read at Law360 and The Recorder (subscriptions required).