Court clerk's 'belief' about potential harm can't upend online access: Ohio municipal judges

CINCINNATI (CN) — The judiciary controls public access to municipal court eviction records, regardless of any clerk of courts’ qualms about privacy interests, judges of the Hamilton County Municipal Court say in a brief filed with Ohio’s high court.

The judges dispute Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Pavan Parikh’s claim that they seek to “hyper-regulate” the operations of his office amidst an ongoing legal battle over online access to eviction records. They emphasize that he has no authority to regulate such access.

“A clerk of court is an arm of the court, and his duties are ‘ministerial,’ ‘clerical,’ and ‘without the exercise of discretion or judicial power,’” they say in the brief filed Wednesday. “Just as the clerk exercises no discretion with respect to the content or type of records accepted or issued by the municipal court, he also has no authority to limit or change the nature of public access to court records.”

The eviction records are accessible via the clerk’s website, but that does not change the fact they belong to the municipal court, the judges say in their brief.

“The clerk relies on his own ‘belief’ that online inquiries for court records relating to evictions led to ‘misidentification of parties with similar names and produced inaccurate and unfair results that harmed citizens’ … [but] made his determination without the benefit of evidence, counsel advocating for the listed factors or competing concerns, or the ability of any interested individual to appeal the clerk’s decision,” they say.

Parikh implemented a policy in 2022 that restricted online public access to eviction records more than three years old and cited concerns about potential harm to job and housing applicants.

All 12 judges of the municipal court asked Parikh to rescind the policy. He refused, resulting in an administrative order from the court and the threat of being held in contempt.

Parikh responded by filing a petition for a writ of prohibition, which spurred the judges to file a counterclaim for a writ of mandamus and eventually led to a decision from an Ohio appeals court in the judges’ favor.

The panel of judges from the First District Court of Appeals found that under the local rules of superintendence, the municipal court has the ultimate say on document access and that Parikh’s policy was unlawful.

Undeterred, the clerk filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court and also asked for a stay to keep the policy in place until the appeal was resolved.

The state high court ultimately denied that motion.

In their brief, the judges reiterate that Parikh’s refusal to comply with their administrative order allowed them to hold him in contempt and emphasized that their unified stance rendered their actions reasonable.

The Ohio Clerk of Courts Association filed an amicus brief with the Ohio Supreme Court in support of Parikh in December 2024 and claimed the clerk’s role in the court system would be rendered pointless with a decision in the judges’ favor.

“The access to certain records on the clerk’s website is the specific issue here; but the point is much larger than that. If a court’s judges are allowed to order their independently elected clerk of courts to run the clerk’s website in a particular way, what are the bounds of this seemingly unlimited administrative authority?” the association says.

“May the judges direct the clerk to purchase a particular type of paper, or require that everyone in the clerk’s office use only gel pens over ballpoint pens? At some point, the clerk becomes a hollowed out shadow of an elected official — elected by the people for show but having no real authority of his or her own,” it concludes.

The judges pushed back against what they saw as the association’s hyperbole.

“The argument, first, exaggerates the essential facts here and, second, does not take into account that the clerk/court relationship is not entirely unique. A county auditor, for example, is an independently elected official but does not have complete control over county funds,” they say.

The judges also cite procedural grounds to dismiss Parikh’s action.

A civil declaratory judgment lawsuit or direct appeal of the contempt order give the clerk an adequate remedy at law that precludes his petition for a writ of prohibition, according to the judges.

Ultimately, they call the arguments presented by Parikh and the association “unconvincing” and unsupported by Ohio law.

“Clerks of court fulfill the same functions under the Ohio Revised Code that they were intended to fulfill, whether appointed or elected. But nothing in those sections or the historical role of the clerk of courts allows that office to usurp the role of the judiciary in Ohio government,” they conclude.

No date has been set for oral arguments before the Ohio Supreme Court.

Courthouse News is currently involved in federal litigation against Parikh for timely access to newly filed complaints in the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. Both parties in that case have submitted briefings in support of motions for summary judgment following a federal judge’s refusal to dismiss the case.

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