Battle between privacy and transparency ensues
The Denton County Commissioners Court met Feb. 14, and approved a resolution 4-1 that would secure the control of court records to district and county clerks and prevent it from becoming a part of a statewide database.
The resolution is a reaction to a statewide access system for court records called reSearch TX. The database is similar to the federal PACER system and will store copies of e-filed documents. The system has support from attorneys and the State Bar of Texas. The majority of county clerks, however, have a problem with it.
When e-filing became available to attorneys to electronically deliver their documents to the courts, the Texas Office of Court Administration said these documents would only be retained by the system for 30 days before being dumped.
“We weren’t told at that time that it would become a statewide system,” Denton County District Clerk Sherri Adelstein said. “We learned in the past couple of months that the vendor has been retaining copies of those files sent to us electronically, and putting them in that database to later be released. Judges have access to these files, next they’re looking to add attorneys and finally the public, just anyone, can go on and become a registered user to look up these documents.”
The approval of the resolution means that Denton County will “oppose any change to current statutes regarding care, custody and control of records held by the county and district clerks and to any actions that would result in those records being centralized within any other entity, be it public or private.”
All but County Commissioner Hugh Coleman were in favor of the resolution.
“I don’t think we should provide barriers to entry to public documents,” Coleman said. “You can’t say you are for transparency, but then say I’m going to provide all these hurdles for you to get it.”
Judge Mary Horn said that while she is all for transparency, she feels an obligation to protect people’s private information.
Adelstein agreed. “I think that I have a moral obligation to not put that on the Internet. There are items and information in these files that can be very embarrassing,” she said. “I’m probably not the only person in this room to be divorced and have papers in our system. Do I want my information out there on the Internet? No, and I don’t think our residents do either.”
Coleman, who also maintains a private law practice, argued that while the system in place does give access to attorneys, it comes at a cost of $200 for two years of access.
Other than transparency, his concern is saving costs for both himself and his litigants. ReSearch TX would make the files available online which means that litigants would no longer have to pay their lawyers to travel to the county clerk office to retrieve documents.
“The federal government…God bless them…the one thing they do well is that under PACER, I can sit here in Denton County and look up a case over an import dispute at a magistrate court in Seattle for free, Coleman said. “ I don’t understand why we can’t locally get our records through the Internet for free. They’re open records, you can walk down to clerk’s office and pull them, why can’t we get them online? We do pay taxes.”
While not opposed to a statewide system, County Clerk Juli Luke finds the reSearch TX database to be “problematic at best.”
“There are too many problems with this one, there are no safeguards,” Luke said. “We know what should be done in order to safeguard some of that sensitive information and ensure there is a process to remove expunged cases.”
County clerks weren’t involved in the creation of the database and Luke said there is currently no way them to remove the expunged cases from the reSearch TX system.
In the Texas Legislature, House Bill 1258 has been filed to put a stop to reSearch TX, and as of now, 29 representatives have signed off on it.
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