The Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) has requested the UP Board of Regents (BOR) to release the Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Networth (SALN) of Supreme Court Associate Justice Marvic Leonen from his time as a UP professor, according to a portion of the UP Gazette’s issue on the decisions of the BOR that should have been redacted.

Leonen has been a target of pro-administration groups due to his dissents on controversial cases. An impeachment complaint filed by Edwin Cordevilla of the Filipino League of Advocates for Good Government last year alleged that Leonen had committed impeachable offenses due to his supposed missing SALNs during his tenure in UP. For purposes of preparing a separate potential quo warranto petition, Solicitor General Jose Calida, along with lawyer Larry Gadon, petitioned the high court, also last year, to release the justice’s SALN.

Though the Supreme Court unanimously denied Calida and Gadon’s request, the OSG sought the university’s help for a similar SALN request, which the UP Diliman (UPD) Human Resource Management Office (HRDO), however, denied.

On November 26, 2020, BOR Chairperson Prospero De Vera III, who is also the chairperson of the Commission on Higher Education, forwarded to UP’s highest policymaking body the OSG’s request to reconsider the HRDO’s decision.

“As a matter of procedure, the Office of the Solicitor General is requesting the Board to override the decision of the HRDO and authorize the release of SALN of Justice Leonen while he was a faculty member of the University of the Philippines,” read part of the redacted minutes of the BOR meeting. That portion of the record has supposedly been blacked out “in compliance with RA 10173 (Data Privacy Act of 2012),” although none of the minutes disclose any sensitive personal information of Leonen.

During the same meeting, De Vera claimed that the BOR had the power, anyway, to reverse the HRDO’s decision since the OSG’s request may be deemed a freedom of information (FOI) request.

Denied FOI requests may be appealed within 15 calendar days of the date of denial to the university’s FOI Decision Maker. Although the decision maker may consult with the Vice President for Legal Affairs (VPLA) or the University’s Legal Office for guidance, the manual is silent on whether FOI requests can be elevated to the BOR.

The board eventually deferred the decision on the OSG’s request for reconsideration to the university’s legal office, which will advise and brief the BOR on the matter. But further discussions on the request were not taken up in the board’s following meeting in January.

UP employees are required to file their SALN every year to the HRDO, which will send it over to the Ombudsman. Leonen, who began teaching in the UP College of Law in 1989, was appointed as the VPLA in 2005, and later as a college dean from 2008 to 2011. In November 2012, former President Benigno Aquino III picked Leonen to sit on the Supreme Court.

Leonen faces an impeachment complaint whose hearing will begin on May 27, after it was referred to the House Justice Committee on May 20. The complaint was endorsed by Rep. Angelo Marcos Barba of Ilocos Norte 2nd District, who is also the second cousin of former Senator Bongbong Marcos. Leonen wrote the unanimous decision that junked Marcos’s electoral protest against Vice President Leni Robredo.

The potency of the impeachment complaint, through the granting of the SALN request, could very well rest on the university’s decision to view the OSG’s request as either a simple FOI request or a matter to which the Supreme Court guidelines should apply.

Although President Rodrigo Duterte has institutionalized the FOI within the executive branch, the judiciary and legislative branches have varying procedures on how to deal with FOI requests, particularly on the release of SALNs.

In the past, two chief justices have been ousted due to issues concerning their SALN. In 2012, the Senate convicted former Chief Justice Renato Corona due to the nondisclosure of his SALNs. In 2018, her colleagues also ousted former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno via quo warranto for her missing SALNs during her time as a faculty member at UP Law. Now, the request for Leonen’s SALN may be used to support a potentially similar quo warranto petition against him.

After the Corona impeachment, the high court made it harder for the public to request the SALN of the members of the judiciary. In a 2014 decision, the court ruled that SALN requests need to be heard by the full bench.

A SALN request “can only be upheld, if under the circumstances, [it] would not result in endangering, diminishing or destroying the independence and security of the members of the Judiciary in the performance of their judicial functions, or expose them to revenge for adverse decisions,” the resolution read.

Even the Ombudsman has made it difficult to access SALNs. In September last year, Ombudsman Samuel Martires, a retired Supreme Court justice, ruled that SALNs could only be released if there was a court order, for the purpose of investigation by the Ombudsman, or if the government officials themselves were requesting a copy.

The university, meanwhile, has been consistent, in at least two instances, in denying requests for SALN of former faculty members who have eventually become members of the Supreme Court.

In 2013, former UP President Alfredo E. Pascual deferred to the HRDO and the Supreme Court after reporters from the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism requested the “university-copy” of Leonen's SALN.

And just three years ago, UPD declined to release SALN records of a certain Supreme Court justice due to data privacy concerns.

The request came from an individual who was a “columnist of The Manila Times, author of politically themed books and a former Philippine ambassador to Greece and Cyprus,” according to an advisory opinion penned by lawyer Elson B. Manahan, the UPD data protection officer. The requester did not also mention their purpose for the request.

Manahan, however, hinted that UPD may release copies of SALN, only from May 15, 2008, onwards, so long as university officials could evaluate the request according to the “data privacy principles of transparency, legitimate purpose, and proportionality,” notwithstanding legal, political, and reputational considerations.

Leonen has been a consistent voice of dissent in the Supreme Court. In the Sereno quo warranto case, he called the court’s decision “a legal abomination.” Meanwhile, his strongly-worded dissent in the case where the court allowed Juan Ponce Enrile to bail triggered then Justice Lucas Bersamin to file a complaint against him for “impugning” the integrity of the justices who sided with Enrile.

UP Law faculty members, for their part, called on the House of Representatives to junk the “baseless” impeachment raps against Leonen. “He (Leonen) has expressed consistently, in his decisions and dissents, a commitment to academic rigor, principled discourse, creative expression, and courageous authenticity,” part of the statement read.

“In a Court of equals, Justice Leonen has emerged as a leading and respected voice for a more independent judiciary, a more responsive arbiter of rights, and a more relevant force for more meaningful freedoms.” ●