A California news outlet filed a lawsuit against the UC Board of Regents on Monday after UCLA failed to fulfill public records requests for nearly one year.
CalMatters, a nonprofit news organization covering issues across California, filed a lawsuit to obtain records about how UCLA pays its student athletes, the outlet reported Monday. The organization filed a similar lawsuit against UC Berkeley.
Under the California Public Records Act, CalMatters filed records requests to 16 UC and California State University campuses last fall about payments to student athletes, according to the lawsuit. Universities can pay athletes for NIL – legal rights to use their name, image and likeness – in promotional materials.
The 1968 law requires government records, including those kept by public universities like the UC, to be disclosed to the public if requested. When records are requested, CPRA requires the relevant government agency to confirm if it received the request. The law also requires the agency to, within 10 days, provide a time estimate for when it will send the records or explain why the request cannot be fulfilled.
CPRA allows requests to not be fulfilled if providing the information would violate privacy or threaten public safety.
The Daily Bruin has dozens of outstanding public records requests from UCLA, some of which have been outstanding for more than a year.
“By allocating public funds to student-athletes and engaging with them in relationships that increasingly resemble commercial business arrangements, UCLA and other public institutions are operating in a manner that demands greater public access, transparency, and accountability,” the lawsuit stated. “As a matter of law and public policy, UCLA cannot escape its obligations under the CPRA.”
The University takes its public records and student privacy responsibilities seriously and will respond to the lawsuit in court, a UC spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
CalMatters was seeking information about the names of athletes who receive payments from the universities and which teams they play on, according to the outlet. After meeting with lawyers, UCLA and UC Berkeley disclosed they each spent around $20.5 million in payments to student athletes during the 2025-26 academic year, the outlet reported.
UCLA at first largely rejected CalMatters’ records requests, arguing that disclosing the records could violate athletes’ privacy, according to the lawsuit.
The UC Board of Regents eventually provided some information about UCLA’s athletes’ payments, though it never disclosed which teams and players received payments, CalMatters alleged in the lawsuit.
The outlet proposed ways for UCLA to provide the documents with redactions to maintain students’ privacy, however those proposals were not implemented, said Neil Chase, CalMatters’ chief executive officer.
Other universities from which the organization requested the same information – such as UC Riverside and San Diego State University – provided some information about which teams received funding, according to CalMatters. However, none of the universities fulfilled the requests in full, the outlet alleged.
CalMatters sued UCLA and UC Berkeley because they offer the largest and most expensive athletic programs among the universities subject to records requests, Chase said.
He added that he had hoped to reach an agreement with the universities before CalMatters leadership felt it necessary to take legal action.
“We were hoping we could have worked it out by now,” he said. “The goal here is to be able to work this out amicably and simply to get the information out there.”
