Is it possible for the dotnet command to not publish some files?

I've received an unusual request from some users of an ASP.NET Core app. I'm using the dotnet command to clean and publish the solution, to a server in our network, using a GitHub self-hosted runner on another server. They don't want the dotnet command to publish the "appsettings.json" and "appsettings.Developer.json" files. Is there a way of preventing dotnet from publishing some files?

Here's the code snippet I'm using from the YAML file:

    - name: Clean build
      run: dotnet clean $env:Solution_Name
    - name: Publish app
      run: dotnet publish -c Release $env:Solution_Name /p:PublishProfile=VaccineRegDevProfile