California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has declined to release pre-2019 police records requested pursuant to SB 1421 until the court adjudicate whether the new law applies retroactively. “We have a couple of cases where courts are about to weigh in on how to interpret that state law, and we want to make sure that we remain consistent,” Becerra told KQED in an interview.
Mark Beckington, California’s supervising deputy attorney general, is quoted in the ABA Journal stating, “Therefore, until the legal question of retroactive application of the statute is resolved by the courts, the public interest in accessing these records is clearly outweighed by the public’s interest in protecting privacy rights.”
