A vast court bureaucracy used public funds and a bagful of tricks to fight press access before losing on a legal slam-dunk last month. This news service is now asking for the legal fees it racked up on the long road to vindicating a press tradition in the courts of America.
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While a court clerk fought to the last ditch against press access, a box on the counter in Ventura’s state court stood as a symbol of access past and future.
Read moreAfter years of legal contest with the huge Southern California court of Orange County, a deal has been struck and the press will once again have access to the new civil cases when they cross the counter, one that was physical and is now virtual.
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Florida’s high court strikes down an old rule requiring that court clerks find and redact private information in public records, based in part on the damage caused to the principle of timely access.
Read moreAmerican courthouses have long worked like a news bakery where judges and juries decided conflicts large and small while beat reporters roamed the courthouse covering those stories for a public audience.
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A First Amendment complaint filed in Austin’s federal court on the last day of 2020 follows the money extracted from the public record by clerks holding up access until they can make a sale.
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On stage 2 of the tour, a bureau chief found the smoking hulk of what used to be one of the premier public access systems in the nation.
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The Courthouse News bureau chief for Florida toured the Sunshine State’s courts to find a public access system in tatters, taken over by local fiefs.
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There is a great schism in the faith of First Amendment access to court records. As with religious schisms, neither logic nor money matters.
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Federal agents in Portland are barred for two more weeks from assaulting and arresting journalists for doing their jobs — an order a federal judge said was necessary based on the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement that its agents would stay in the city until the government sees improvement in what it called the “dynamic and volatile” situation there.
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The American Civil Liberties Union may soon be the arbiter of who is and isn’t a journalist at Portland protests, with a federal judge floating the idea of requiring journalists to be identified by the organization’s blue vests in order to avoid assault or arrest by federal agents under the court’s temporary restraining order.
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A Seattle judge on Thursday put the brakes on an order requiring all local major media outlets to turn over to police unedited video of a Black Lives Matter protest, deciding instead that he will conduct an in camera review and decide what — if any — footage will go to police.
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At oral arguments two years ago in a First Amendment case, a Ninth Circuit judge asked a question. At trial in January, on the other side of the country, a federal judge considering the same First Amendment issue asked an almost identical question.
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Over entrenched resistance from state court clerks, the national press corps filed an appellate brief Monday in support of the First Amendment principle that press and public have the right to see new court filings on the day they are filed.
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Ask any government entity about its pandemic plan in the beginning of March, and you were too early to be taken seriously. If you waited until the end of the month, you were told to get in line.
Read moreA federal judge in Virginia awarded $2 million in attorney fees against two Virginia court clerks on Wednesday in a First Amendment case brought by Courthouse News. The fee award was the result of a ruling that said reporters are entitled under the Constitution to see new filings on the day they are filed where practicable.
Read moreIn writing about our long war for access to court records, I sometimes forget to mention the obvious, that this conflict is played out under the aegis of the First Amendment.
Read moreThe language used for the electronic filing of court documents translates into an older, simpler set of terms for paper filing. Press access hangs on understanding that translation.
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