In June, 2016, the ACLU Foundation of Northern California sued the Stockton Unified School District (SUSD) for violating state and federal law by refusing to release SUSD's Police Department student arrest and citation data. A Public Records Act request by the ACLU revealed that from 2012-2016, the SUSD police department filed 12,000 “incident reports." However, in response to the ACLU's request, the district chose to withold crucial information, like the reason for arrests and citations, and data on the youth affected.

The ACLU of Northern California filed suit against the city of Berkeley on behalf of Berkeleyside, an online publication that was denied police records under the police transparency bill SB 1421.

On Jan. 2, 2019, Berkeleyside requested records now available under the historic new law. On Jan. 18, the Berkeley City Attorney responded and refused to release any records created before Jan. 1.