J. v. City and County of San Francisco

Background

This putative class action concerns the arrest of more than one hundred people during the July 2023 Dolores Hill Bomb, an unsanctioned skateboarding event. The defendants are the City and County of San Francisco and several police officials. The opinion states that many of the detainees, including the plaintiffs, were minors at the time.

The order resolves two joint discovery letter briefs concerning subpoenas. Defendants subpoenaed the schools of the named plaintiffs for all academic records, including transcripts, attendance, tardiness, discipline, and extracurricular participation. Defendants agreed to limit the school-record subpoenas to records from two years before the arrests through the present.

Defendants also subpoenaed E.J., a former named plaintiff who voluntarily dismissed his claims without prejudice, and his mother, Sophia Chumley. The subpoenas sought numerous categories of information, including communications, social-media records, electronic-device activity, search history, geolocation data, photographs, videos, financial records, and communications with the media. Defendants also demanded inspection of electronic devices containing data from specified periods.

Legal standard

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 requires the issuing party to take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense on a subpoena recipient. The court must quash a subpoena—that is, cancel or invalidate it—if it subjects a person to undue burden. Discovery under Rule 45 has the same scope as discovery under Rule 26: it must concern nonprivileged information relevant to a claim or defense and proportional to the needs of the case.

The court emphasized that nonparties receive extra protection and that parties generally should seek documents from one another before burdening nonparties. A party may also challenge a subpoena served on a nonparty when the subpoena implicates the party’s cognizable interests, including privacy interests.

Academic-record subpoenas

Plaintiffs said they were not claiming that their arrests or detention affected their school performance, future wages, or future careers. Defendants argued that the academic records were relevant to damages and equitable relief. The court acknowledged that the amended complaint referred to fears about future jobs, careers, college prospects, and scholarships, and that its request for general damages could potentially be read broadly.

Plaintiffs clarified, however, that they did not intend to seek damages for harm to potential future careers. The court also found that academic performance was not necessary to evaluate the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction concerning their arrest and detention records. Even if academic performance had some indirect relevance to future prospects, the court said those issues could initially be addressed through deposition testimony.

Because the plaintiffs’ claims did not materially place their academic records at issue, and because Defendants did not meet the heightened burden required to justify disclosure of educational records, the court QUASHED all subpoenas for academic records. Defendants were ordered to provide this order to the educational institutions they subpoenaed.

Subpoena to E.J.

The court found the subpoena’s scope exceptionally broad. As originally written, it sought essentially all electronic records and messages created or retained by E.J. and Chumley over a three-month period, including information about any subject and communications with any person. The court concluded that most of the information would have no apparent relevance to the case.

The court rejected Defendants’ effort to justify a forensic examination of E.J.’s and Chumley’s electronic records based on possible relevance to probable cause, dispersal orders, alleged vandalism or graffiti, parental contact, or evidence preservation. It said that police video recordings, police records, and testimony were more likely to address many of those issues. E.J.’s status as a former plaintiff and current nonparty also weighed against imposing a substantial discovery burden.

The court found E.J.’s proposed production more reasonable than Defendants’ demands but broader than E.J. had offered. It therefore ordered E.J. to produce all nonprivileged documents—including photographs, videos, and messages of any kind—that describe or depict the July 2023 Dolores Hill Bomb and the subsequent mass detention. The production must include documents reflecting E.J.’s whereabouts, activities, or state of mind during those events, regardless of when the documents were created.

The court also addressed possible geolocation data. If Defendants pursue that information, any forensic review must be narrowly targeted, and production must be limited to 4:00 p.m. on July 8, 2023, through 2:00 a.m. on July 9, 2023. Defendants must pay the cost of any forensic review and extraction. The parties were ordered to meet and confer about whether the data likely exists and whether it can reasonably be accessed, then file either a stipulation or a joint letter by October 15, 2024.

Accordingly, the court QUASHED E.J.’s subpoena in part and ordered E.J. to produce documents consistent with the order by October 15, 2024.

Subpoena to Sophia Chumley

The court found no sufficient basis for imposing the requested burden on Chumley. The opinion states that Chumley was not involved in the events at issue except for picking up E.J. after his release from detention. The requests for her invoices and other telecommunications, application, gaming, device, and usage information were described as intrusive and not proportional to the needs of the case.

The court therefore QUASHED the subpoena served on Sophia Chumley in its entirety.

Disposition

The court’s discovery rulings were: (1) all subpoenas for academic records were QUASHED; (2) E.J.’s subpoena was QUASHED in part, with limited production ordered; and (3) Sophia Chumley’s subpoena was QUASHED in its entirety. The order also required the parties to follow the stated process if Defendants seek E.J.’s geolocation data.