• We are now running on a new, and hopefully much-improved, server. In addition we are also on new forum software. Any move entails a lot of technical details and I suspect we will encounter a few issues as the new server goes live. Please be patient with us. It will be worth it! :) Please help by posting all issues here.
  • The forum will be down for about an hour this weekend for maintenance. I apologize for the inconvenience.
  • If you are having trouble seeing the forum then you may need to clear your browser's DNS cache. Click here for instructions on how to do that
  • Please review the Forum Rules frequently as we are constantly trying to improve the forum for our members and visitors.

FOIA vs. Virginia Supreme Court

TFred

TFred

Regular Member
Joined
Oct 13, 2008
Messages
7,750
Location
Most historic town in, Virginia, USA
Marginally on topic here, as many of our points of discussion count on access to court case information. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

TFred

No basis for Virginia Supreme Court to withhold records, state council says

Statewide court records maintained by the Supreme Court of Virginia should be publicly available in compiled form, according to an opinion issued by the state's Freedom of Information Advisory Council.

The Supreme Court's Office of the Executive Secretary refused to release compiled court records to the Daily Press and instead required case-by-case requests. The Daily Press has been pushing for access to the entire database for nearly a year, arguing that the information is a public record with critical information about how well and fairly the state's courts work.

[...]

"Denying access to the complete database while at the same time allowing access to individual case entries does not appear to serve any public purchase, but instead acts as an artificial impediment to access to public records, which stands in contradiction to the stated purposes of FOIA," the council opinion said.​
 
Repeater

Repeater

Regular Member
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
2,498
Location
Richmond, Virginia, USA
Opinion AO-03-15

Thanks for the article. The opinion is here.
In summary, it appears that OES by statute operates and maintains a case management system, the operation and maintenance of the system is the transaction of OES' public business, and therefore OES' case management records are public records subject to FOIA. By operation of law, the respective clerks also remain custodians of those records, and they bear responsibility for maintaining the integrity of those records. To the extent that OES owns or possesses such data, it is also a custodian of such records and likewise responsible to respond to a request for it under FOIA.
Click to expand...
 
peter nap

peter nap

Accomplished Advocate
Joined
Oct 16, 2007
Messages
13,551
Location
Valhalla
To be honest TFred, I think any and transparency issues are on topic here. We depend on it a great deal and as you know, the system let's us down often.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top