Santa Clara County Superior Court found Sam Liccardo, as San Jose mayor, and the City of San Jose failed to conduct an adequate search of his private email and text accounts for public records, 2023

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In San Jose Spotlight and First Amendment Coalition v. City of San Jose and Mayor Liccardo (Case No. 22CV394443), the petitioners sued on Feb 3, 2022 under the California Public Records Act over requests, served between December 2020 and July 2021, that covered communications on Liccardo's personal email and text accounts. On July 3, 2023, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Thomas E. Kuhnle granted a writ of mandate in part: he allowed the city to keep withholding a number of records under CPRA exemptions, ordered San Jose to produce a larger set of other records, denied injunctive relief, and ordered Liccardo and his chief operations officer to file declarations describing in detail how they searched his private email and text accounts and the training they had received, because the respondents had not furnished evidence of how those searches were conducted. On Aug 29, 2023, after reviewing the declarations, the court amended its order to find that Liccardo and the City "have failed to conduct an adequate search of Liccardo's private email account and his private text message account," and clarified that the deficient searches were made in his capacity as a city official, not as an individual. The ruling imposed no penalty on Liccardo personally; under the CPRA, attorney's fees are paid by the agency and do not become a personal liability of the official. On Nov 28, 2023 the San Jose City Council unanimously approved a $500,000 payment to the two petitioners for attorneys' fees and costs, which San Jose Spotlight reported formally ended the case. Liccardo told San Jose Spotlight in August 2023 that the requests "required very expansive searches" and produced more than 8,900 pages, that the city attempted in good faith to comply, and that if the judge wanted more detail on the searches and training, "we will happily provide that information." Of the settlement, he said taxpayers would be better served by an appeal than by "wasting $500,000" on fees. Liccardo left the mayor's office in January 2023 and has been a U.S. Representative since January 2025.

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