The Center for American Liberty filed a lawsuit in May against the city of Berkeley, alleging it failed to provide sufficient responses to public records requests regarding the security of the UC Berkeley Turning Point USA event on Nov. 11, 2025.<\/p>\n
The free speech non-profit Center for American Liberty, or CAL, reportedly requested public records that fall under 11 categories. These included Berkeley Police Department and UCPD planning and communications, arrest information from the day, video footage from body-worn cameras and cameras adjacent to the venue, as well as after-action reviews.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit claims that the city did not provide information in the timeline required by law, and did not provide sufficient responses to CAL\u2019s requests. An Initial Case Management Conference is scheduled for Dec. 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe CITY claims \u2026 the public\u2019s interest in nondisclosure clearly outweighs the public\u2019s interest in disclosure,\u201d the lawsuit says. \u201cThis is belied by the very fact that the Event, and the ensuing criminal protestor activity resulted in significant local and national public interest, as well as the institution of an investigation by the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the lawsuit, CAL alleges the city made multiple missteps in cooperating with the California Public Records Act. It alleges the city passed its 24-day deadline without any response, only providing responses to the requests on April 27, when the initial filing was on Jan. 14.<\/p>\n
CAL claims the city failed to offer any response between its Feb. 9 deadline and April 27, despite three reminders.<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges the response CAL received was insubstantial. The city used four exemptions to withhold certain documents, which CAL challenges. The city reportedly only provided seven \u201cbrief\u201d emails offering little information relevant to the request.<\/p>\n
The city of Berkeley did not provide comment as of press time. The lawsuit is still being discussed in closed session City Council meetings.<\/p>\n
According to UC Berkeley spokesperson Janet Gilmore, campus similarly received CPRA requests from CAL about police response to the TPUSA event, but had no UCPD or BPD communications documents to provide.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are committed to continuing to host speakers and events representing a variety of viewpoints in a safe and respectful manner. We continue to evaluate our policies and practices to ensure that open dialogue and the rule of law continue to be upheld on our campus,\u201d Gilmore said in an email.<\/p>\n
CAL\u2019s founder, Harmeet K. Dhillon, previously sued campus in 2017, and is currently investigating them as the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. She is not representing CAL in this case.<\/p>\n
In the 2017 suit, Dhillon Law Group sued campus on behalf of Berkeley College Republicans and Young America\u2019s Foundation after UC Berkeley canceled planned appearances by conservative commentators Milo Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter and David Horowitz, claiming a violation of free speech.<\/p>\n
Campus settled with a one-time $70,000 payment to cover the plaintiff\u2019s attorney costs, as well as a revision of the campus Major Events Policy, without conceding any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
As the DOJ\u2019s assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division under President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, Dhillon has investigated UC Berkeley twice, once in response to the Nov. 11 TPUSA event, and once last week, announcing the UC Berkeley School of Law illegally practiced affirmative action in admissions to favor Black applicants.<\/p>\n
Both CAL and its representation did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Center for American Liberty filed a lawsuit in May against the city of Berkeley, alleging it failed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[186139,156,7,47078,186138,1610,32259,26704,7045,1054,17423,16155,143,145,144,49710,30724,149,14759,186140],"class_list":["post-473218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-college-republicans","tag-bpd","tag-california","tag-california-public-records-act","tag-center-for-american-liberty","tag-city-council","tag-city-of-berkeley","tag-civil-rights-division","tag-department-of-justice","tag-doj","tag-harmeet-dhillon","tag-janet-gilmore","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-tpusa","tag-turning-point-usa","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-ucpd","tag-young-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}