{"id":42492,"date":"2014-08-28T08:14:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T08:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=42492"},"modified":"2014-08-28T08:14:21","modified_gmt":"2014-08-28T08:14:21","slug":"landmark-civil-rights-legal-records-deleted-from-pacer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=42492","title":{"rendered":"Landmark civil rights legal records deleted from Pacer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"story_continues_1\">Records of landmark US civil rights cases presided over by one of the country&#8217;s most senior judges have been removed from the internet.<\/p>\n<p>The state-run Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) service deleted numerous court documents deemed incompatible with a software upgrade.<\/p>\n<p>These included appeals heard by Justice Sonia Sotomayor prior to her appointment to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>A famous racial discrimination case was among the expunged files.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;s most notable cases during her time on the Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"US President Barack Obama and Justice Sonia Sotomayor\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/77206000\/jpg\/_77206861_89757497.jpg\" width=\"593\" height=\"339\" \/><\/div>\n<div>Barack Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in 2009<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>In an announcement two weeks ago, Pacer\u00a0said the archaic &#8220;management systems&#8221; of the following five courts\u00a0meant their files would no longer be available online.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit (New York, Connecticut, Vermont)<\/li>\n<li>US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit (Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin)<\/li>\n<li>US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit (Georgia, Alabama, Florida)<\/li>\n<li>US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington DC)<\/li>\n<li>US Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Justice Sotomayor served on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals from 1998 to 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Hard copies will still be available from the courts in question, but for a fee of $30 (\u00a318) &#8211; significantly higher than the $0.10 per page the service charges to access copies on the web.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, it can take days to receive non-digital records.<\/p>\n<div><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"New Haven firefighters\" src=\"http:\/\/news.bbcimg.co.uk\/media\/images\/77206000\/jpg\/_77206647_89064714.jpg\" width=\"593\" height=\"339\" \/>A group of New Haven firefighters sued the city after it threw out test results due to race<\/div>\n<p>&#8216;Fundamental&#8217; issue<\/p>\n<p>Pacer has long faced criticism for its arcane structure, and for the fact that it charges for each record accessed.<\/p>\n<p>Carl Malamud, the founder of non-profit Public.Resource.Org, and advocate of ensuring that government documents remain freely available online, told the BBC:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s ridiculous. An historical database is essential to the legal profession, and for that matter, to journalists or students.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s fundamental that justice is not done behind locked doors, but in public view,&#8221; he added, citing the US Constitution&#8217;s demand that legal records be made freely available.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Today, public view is the internet.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Records of landmark US civil rights cases presided over by one of the country&#8217;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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":42493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-42492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-dr-akwasi-osei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/42493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}