Ohio court backs off plans to restrict open records data

“Just as we can’t prevent anyone from going postal in a courtroom, we can’t as a court stop identity theft.”

Theresa Dellick

Mahoning County Juvenile Court judge

News organizations had protested plans to implement limits.

COLUMBUS (AP) — Ohio’s high court is backing off plans that would have restricted the amount of information available in court records, such as birth dates and addresses.

A court committee said Friday that a series of restrictions, introduced last year, was not needed. Instead, the judge-dominated panel tossed limits, introduced for fears of identity theft.

“Just as we can’t prevent anyone from going postal in a courtroom, we can’t as a court stop identity theft,” said Mahoning County Juvenile Court Judge Theresa Dellick, a member of the panel drafting rules for accessing court records.

News organizations, private investigators and open-government activists protested the limits. The courts’ Commission on the Rules of Superintendence said it didn’t mean to limit access to public records.

“I don’t think anyone in this room is saying we’re trying to create secrecy in the court system,” said Supreme Court Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger, who leads the 19-member commission. “That’s not the idea here.”

She said the moves were not without merit.

“We’re not just spinning our wheels here without good authority for no reason,” she said.

Critics said some of the information was available only in the records. Court records often contain salaries and employment histories that aren’t available elsewhere.

Media lawyer David Marburger said the state’s top court shouldn’t tinker with the rules. He said local courts should be able to set their own rules.

“Once the steamroller is rolling, it will be too late to say, ‘Hey, you guys don’t have the power to do this,’” Marburger said.

The commission, meanwhile, closed complaints against employees that don’t result in discipline. Cincinnati-area employment lawyers asked for those records to be limited to prevent bogus complaints from becoming public.

“If there is a baseless complaint filed by one employee against another that is in some degree slanderous, I don’t see why that should be a public record,” said Steven C. Hollon, a Supreme Court administrator who is on the panel.

The panel planned to vote on the modified rules in June. The full Supreme Court still has to vote on them.