Records have started to close at the Bay Area’s regional archive while the state’s case awaits its first scheduled conference in February and Northern California lawmakers press a bill to stop the move.
By Staff Reporter
The move has already begun. On Tuesday, the National Archives and Records Administration was scheduled to close its collection of NASA records at the National Archives at San Francisco, in San Bruno, to prepare them for shipment to Fort Worth, Texas. The agency estimates that researchers will be able to see them again on Nov. 16, in Texas.
A day later, California sued to stop the rest of the move. But the docket in that case, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, shows how much the fight over one of the West’s most important historical collections may turn on timing.
A case assigned, a conference in February
The complaint in California v. National Archives and Records Administration, No. 3:26-cv-11868, was filed Oct. 14 by Attorney General Rob Bonta against the agency and Bradford Wilson, in his official capacity as Archivist of the United States. On Thursday, the case was assigned to District Judge Noel Wise, and the clerk set an initial case management conference for Feb. 2, 2027, by videoconference, with a joint statement due Jan. 15.
Those dates are routine and can be overtaken by motions; a party seeking to halt an agency action quickly typically asks for a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction. As of the docket’s most recent entries on Thursday, no such motion had been filed. The state’s complaint asks the court to vacate the closure decision and bar transfers, arguing that the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously under the Administrative Procedure Act by deciding “unilaterally” and without consulting the state, tribes or other users.
The complaint also suggests why timing matters. It says that on Sept. 28 the agency awarded $8.8 million, with an anticipated ceiling of $25 million, to Iron Mountain Information Management for “shelf-to-shelf transfer of federal records between various NARA facilities.” It cites a 2024 evaluation by the agency’s inspector general that found the agency had not fully complied with relocation requirements, resulting in “insufficient validation and confirmation of actual quantities of records moved.”
Where the records would go
The San Bruno facility holds more than 75,000 cubic feet of records from federal agencies in Northern and Central California, Hawaii, most of Nevada, Guam and American Samoa, according to Mr. Bonta’s office. The complaint says it includes physical copies of more than 300,000 immigration “A-files” for people born before 1925, along with Chinese Exclusion Act case files, Native American boarding school records and Japanese American internment records, among them files from the case of Fred Korematsu.
The agency’s own relocation plan, posted in August, shows how those collections would be divided among five facilities. An Inquirer review of the record groups listed shows that federal court records and the files of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service, the core of the Chinese Exclusion-era holdings, would go to Kansas City, Mo. Bureau of Indian Affairs records would go to Denver, which the complaint says will receive the largest share. Military records would go to Riverside, the one destination in California.
The agency has defended the closures as a matter of space and money. Its notice says the federal government’s shift to electronic recordkeeping has left records centers underused, that it stopped accepting paper transfers into the program in June 2024, and that the buildings, more than 50 years old, need upgrades that are “fiscally unviable for the agency.” It adds that “all archival records” will “continue to be accessible to researchers” at their new locations. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CalMatters after the suit was filed, and NBC Bay Area reported that the administration did not immediately comment.
Mr. Bonta’s office says fewer than 4 percent of the archives’ records nationwide have been digitized, so most material can be consulted only in person. California State Parks, it says, sent researchers to San Bruno more than 10 times during the refurbishment of the Angel Island barracks.
Tribes, Congress and a narrowing window
The agency held two virtual sessions with tribal nations on Oct. 13 and Oct. 15. Participants told ICT, in a report published by CalMatters, that the sessions felt like listening sessions rather than consultation and that the decision appeared final. “It feels a lot like lip service,” said Fallon Carey, digital archives director for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, who attended on Thursday. Attendees said officials agreed to move the Bureau of Indian Affairs records last.
In Washington, the Bay Area’s delegation has sought a legislative fix. Representative Kevin Mullin, whose district includes San Bruno, introduced H.R. 10131, the National Archives Protection Act, on Aug. 20, with Representatives Judy Chu, Doris Matsui and Ro Khanna of California among the original co-sponsors. The bill would bar the archivist from closing, or imposing “unreasonable restrictions on public access” to, any existing records center or archive facility. Senators Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff introduced a Senate version on Sept. 30 with Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, where the agency’s Chicago facility is also slated to close.
The House bill was referred to the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and its sponsors’ party is in the minority in both chambers. Mr. Mullin and Ms. Chu also led a letter signed by 37 lawmakers urging the agency to reconsider, and the San Mateo County and San Francisco Boards of Supervisors have passed resolutions opposing the closure, according to the complaint.
That leaves the court as the most immediate venue. The agency has not announced a closing date for the building, and its website says only that it will close “in the next few years.” The question for California is whether the records will still be in San Bruno when the case is decided.
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