Former Los Angeles Times reporter Maya Lau filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against Los Angeles County, former Sheriff Alex Villanueva, a former undersheriff and a former detective, alleging that a criminal investigation into her activities as a journalist violated her 1st Amendment rights.
The suit comes less than a year after a Times article revealed that Lau had been the target of an L.A. County Sheriff’s Department investigation that “was designed to intimidate and punish Lau for her reporting” about a leaked list of deputies with a history of misconduct, Lau’s attorneys alleged in an emailed statement.
Lau’s lawsuit seeks unspecified damages to compensate her for alleged violations of her dignity and privacy, as well as the “continuous injuries” and anxiety she says in the complaint that she has faced in the wake of the revelation she had been investigated.
The suit details “six different counts of violating Ms. Lau’s rights under the U.S. constitution and California state law, including retaliation and civil conspiracy to deny constitutional rights,” according to the statement by Lau’s attorneys.
“It is an absolute outrage that the Sheriff’s Department would criminally investigate a journalist for doing her job,” Lau said in the statement. “I am bringing this lawsuit not just for my own sake, but to send a clear signal in the name of reporters everywhere: we will not be intimidated. The Sheriff’s Department needs to know that these kinds of tactics against journalists are illegal.”
The Sheriff’s Department said in an emailed statement that it had “not been officially served with this lawsuit” by late Tuesday afternoon.
“While these allegations stem from a prior administration, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department under Sheriff Robert G. Luna is firmly committed to upholding the Constitution, including the First Amendment,” the statement said. “We respect the vital role journalists play in holding agencies accountable and believe in the public’s right to a free and independent press.”
Villanueva said via email that he had not yet reviewed the complaint in full and that “under the advice of counsel, I do not comment on pending litigation.”
“What I can say is the investigation in question, like all investigations conducted by the Public Corruption Unit during my tenure as Sheriff of Los Angeles County, were based on facts that were presented to the Office of the Attorney General,” he said. “It is the political establishment, of which the LA Times is a part, that wishes to chill lawful investigations and criminal accountability with frivolous lawsuits such as this one.”
A spokesperson for the county counsel’s office declined to comment further. The other defendants in the lawsuit, former Undersheriff Tim Murakami and former Det. Mark Lillienfeld, did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.
In December 2017, The Times published an article by Lau about a list of about 300 problem deputies. A lengthy case file reviewed by The Times last year found that department investigators launched an initial inquiry into who provided Lau with the list. The agency’s investigation began when Jim McDonnell was sheriff in 2017. The Sheriff’s Department ultimately dropped the investigation without referring it for prosecution after, as Lau’s complaint says, it “turned up no evidence connecting Ms. Lau to any crime.”
The case file reviewed by The Times last year stated that, after Villanueva became sheriff in 2018, he revived the investigation into Lau, which the complaint alleges was part of an “unlawful conspiracy” conducted as part of a policy of “retaliatory criminal charges against perceived opponents of LASD.”
Lillienfeld led the investigation, and Villanueva “delegated to Undersheriff Murakami his decision-making authority” in the probe, which Murakami ultimately referred to the state attorney general’s office for prosecution, Lau’s complaint says. In May 2024, the office declined to prosecute her, citing insufficient evidence.
But Lau alleges that the damage was already done and that her rights under the 1st Amendment and California’s Constitution had been violated. “If LASD’s actions are left unredressed,” according to the complaint, “journalists in Los Angeles will be chilled from reporting on matters of public concern out of fear that they will be investigated and prosecuted.”
The Sheriff’s Department told The Times last year that its investigation of Lau was closed and that the department under Luna does not monitor journalists.
David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a nonprofit free speech and press freedom advocacy organization, told The Times last year that reporting on leaked materials involving a matter of public concern is typically “protected under the 1st Amendment” even if a reporter is aware they were obtained illegally.
“You’re not authorized to break into a file cabinet to get records. You’re not authorized to hack computers. But receiving information that somebody else obtained unlawfully is not a crime,” Snyder said.
The saga of the leaked records began in 2014 when Diana Teran compiled a list of deputies with histories of disciplinary problems. Teran was working for the county Office of Independent Review, which conducted oversight of the Sheriff’s Department until it closed down that July.
In 2015, Teran was hired by the Sheriff’s Department to serve in an internal watchdog role. In 2017, according to the investigative file reviewed by The Times last year, she heard that Times reporters including Lau had been asking questions about the list.
After investigating further and learning that the reporters had asked about specific details that matched her 2014 list, she grew worried that it had been leaked.
On Dec. 8, 2017, The Times ran an investigation by Lau and two other reporters that described some of the misconduct detailed in the list, including planting evidence, falsifying records and sexual assault. Some of the deputies on the list, the reporters found, had kept their jobs or been promoted.
Sheriff’s investigators interviewed Teran and other department officials who all denied leaking the list. The investigation was dropped before Villanueva became sheriff in November 2018.
Several months later, Lillienfeld was assigned to investigate allegations that Teran and other oversight officials had illegally accessed department personnel records, reopening the probe into the leaked list.
Lillienfeld’s inquiry produced an 80-page report that was part of the case file reviewed by The Times last year. It detailed potential times when the list could have been leaked by Teran and stated that she denied doing so.
In fall 2021, Murakami sent the 300-page case file — which identified Lau, Teran, L.A. County Inspector General Max Huntsman, an assistant to Teran and an attorney in Huntsman’s office as suspects — to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta. There was no probable cause to prosecute Lau, according to the complaint.
“Undersheriff Murakami alleged that Ms. Lau had engaged in conspiracy, theft of government property, unlawful access of a computer, burglary, and receiving stolen property,” the complaint says. “Ms. Lau did not commit any of these crimes.”
Bonta declined to prosecute the case.
“The retaliatory investigation against Ms. Lau is one example of how Alex Villanueva used the LASD to target and harass his political opponents,” said Justin Hill, an attorney at Loevy & Loevy representing Lau. “Our communities suffer when governmental leaders try to silence journalists and other individuals who hold those leaders accountable. This lawsuit seeks to reaffirm the protected role that journalism plays in our society.”
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