Records of landmark US civil rights cases presided over by one of the country’s most senior judges have been removed from the internet.
The state-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) service deleted numerous court documents deemed incompatible with a software upgrade.
These included appeals heard by Justice Sonia Sotomayor prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court.
A famous racial discrimination case was among the expunged files.
Ricci v DeStefano, in which it was alleged that the race of Connecticut firefighters was taken into consideration when awarding promotions, was one of Justice Sotomayor’s most notable cases during her time on the Court of Appeals.
The lawsuit is one of several that have been permanently taken down by Pacer, which is tasked by the US judiciary with looking after the online archiving of court documents.
In an announcement two weeks ago, Pacer said the archaic “management systems” of the following five courts meant their files would no longer be available online.
- US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit (New York, Connecticut, Vermont)
- US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit (Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin)
- US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (Georgia, Alabama, Florida)
- US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington DC)
- US Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California
Justice Sotomayor served on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals from 1998 to 2009.
Hard copies will still be available from the courts in question, but for a fee of $30 (£18) – significantly higher than the $0.10 per page the service charges to access copies on the web.
Additionally, it can take days to receive non-digital records.
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Pacer has long faced criticism for its arcane structure, and for the fact that it charges for each record accessed.
Carl Malamud, the founder of non-profit Public.Resource.Org, and advocate of ensuring that government documents remain freely available online, told the BBC:
“It’s ridiculous. An historical database is essential to the legal profession, and for that matter, to journalists or students.”
“It’s fundamental that justice is not done behind locked doors, but in public view,” he added, citing the US Constitution’s demand that legal records be made freely available.
“Today, public view is the internet.”
Source: BBC