• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

A group of newsrooms is fighting to maintain timely access to court records by filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. 

The case is that of Courthouse News Service (CNS) vs. Sara Omundson, Idaho’s chief court administrator.

Omundson had been withholding new court pleadings after state courts moved to electronic filing, effectively turning them into old news, CNS charged.

This didn’t sit well with U.S. District Court Judge David Nye. “The Court herby enters a declaratory judgment that Omundson’s policy is unconstitutional,” Niye ruled last September. “She is preliminarily and permanently enjoined from continuing any process that denies CNS timely access to new non-confidential civil complaints.” 

The matter is now before the appeals court.

The Amici filers contend that Omundson is seeking to circumvent precedent by arguing that “a filed complaint is not a ‘judicial document’ while it sits in the clerk’s electronic inbox, but instead is transformed into one by the clerk once he or she ‘signs into’ the system, ‘performs a limited review of the submission,’ and accepts it."

“Not so,” the brief continues. “It cannot be the case that an important legal right of public access is triggered by clerical machinations rather than the act by a litigant to engage the judicial process.” 

Thus, the brief is based on these premises:

- A complaint submitted to a court is a ‘judicial document’ subject to the First Amendment right of access, regardless of whether a clerk has yet accepted it. 

- The District Court properly balanced the benefit of immediate public access against the purported harm to Idaho. 

We hope that the appeals court is persuaded by the arguments in the interest of maintaining the free flow of information.

Who’s standing up for the First Amendment here? The signers include the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; American Broadcasting Companies, Inc.; The Associated Press; The Atlantic Monthly Group LLC; The Center for Investigative Reporting; The E.W. Scripps Company; First Amendment Coalition; Gannett Co., Inc.; Gray Local Media, Inc.; HuffPost; The Intercept Media, Inc.; Los Angeles Times Communications LLC; The National Press Club; National Press Photographers Association; New York Public Radio; The New York Times Company; News/Media Alliance; Online News Association; Pro Publica, Inc.; Radio Television Digital News Association; The Seattle Times Company; Society of Professional Journalists; TEGNA Inc.; and WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post.