By Bo Tefu and Antonio Ray Harvey | California Black Media
California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration to block the planned closure of the National Archives in San Francisco, arguing that the move would limit access to historical records essential to families, Tribal communities, researchers and state agencies.
The lawsuit, filed Oct. 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) decision to close the facility in San Bruno and distribute its records among five federal archives locations across the country.
Bonta argues that the decision violates the federal Administrative Procedure Act because the agency failed to adequately consider the consequences for California and other affected communities.
“These records belong here with the communities whose stories they tell, and I’ll fight to keep them here,” Bonta said during a press conference announcing the lawsuit.
The San Francisco National Archives houses more than 75,000 cubic feet of federal records covering Northern and Central California, Hawaii, most of Nevada, Guam, and American Samoa. Its collections include immigration and court records, genealogical documents, Indian boarding school records, and files related to the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese American internment.
The archives also hold records from Fred Korematsu’s legal challenge to his arrest for refusing to report for internment during World War II. Families use the records to trace their ancestry and establish citizenship, while Tribal communities rely on them to establish membership, seek federal recognition, and defend land and treaty rights.
“The federal government should not be putting up barriers between Californians and the records they depend on,” Bonta said, criticizing the federal government for proceeding without sufficient consultation or consideration of the consequences.
NARA informed employees in June that it planned to close the San Francisco and Chicago archives within the next few years, with transfers beginning within months.
In August, the agency announced that San Francisco’s holdings would be distributed among five facilities. According to Bonta’s office, transfers could begin as soon as this week, starting with NASA records moving to Fort Worth, Texas.
The state argues that losing local access could disrupt public projects requiring historical research to comply with environmental laws.
California State Parks, for example, consulted the archives more than 10 times while refurbishing the barracks on Angel Island. Officials warn that pending projects could become impossible to complete if records are temporarily unavailable or too costly to access out of state.
University researchers also depend on physical access to archival materials that are not available online. Bonta’s office says fewer than 4% of National Archives records nationwide have been digitized, and some fragile documents cannot be digitized without risking damage.
Bonta is asking the court to overturn NARA’s closure decision and prohibit the transfer of records from the San Bruno facility. The lawsuit seeks to preserve local access to historical materials used for research, education, and public projects.
Photo: A San Francisco family steps off a bus at the Tanforan Assembly Center in San Bruno in 1942, at the start of Japanese American internment. Photo by Dorothea Lange, from the collections of the National Archives, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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