eFiling Advances in Maryland

Happily, good news has come out of the Maryland Courts Rules Committee and it bodes well for the future of news gathering. MDDC was successful in getting an amendment passed that guarantees access to court documents when eFiling is used.

You may know that circuit courts in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties and Baltimore City are working with eFiling case management systems. These computer based filing systems allow lawyers to file electronically, create case dockets electronically, allow courts to post orders and schedule hearings, and do many other tasks. They increase the efficiency of case management at the courthouse and reduce the keyboarding that has to be done by the clerk’s office. 

The electronic systems used in the three circuit courts offer some version of public access to the normally public paper court records. In Baltimore, a computer at the courthouse is available to anyone who wants to explore the asbestos cases.  In Montgomery County and Prince George’s, any publisher can subscribe to dial-up systems that allow access from any remote computer cleared through the subscriber system.

Taking it down to brass tacks, the eFiling systems allow reporters to check on case dockets and court dockets from their desks, almost as fast as the events are logged in.

On Friday Oct. 12 the chief administrative judge of Maryland District Courts asked for a new rule that would allow the District Courts to participate in the eFiling pilot project plan. Any district court administrator can bring a pilot program for eFiling to the Court of Appeals for approval. The new rule sets out certain requirements that any pilot proposal must meet, and it was these requirements that MDDC sought to amend.

MDDC asked me to offer an amendment to the rules for District Courts and Circuit Courts that would explicitly require the same public access as paper files allow. The amendment was intended to counter-balance a requirement to protect privacy, and to make explicit what is already apparent to the press.

Eventually, the Rules committee agreed. After an hour of debate, the Committee adopted language saying that any eFiling plan proposed "must not limit public access to any public record or document."  The same language will amend the rule for Circuit Courts as well. 

Though one committee member called us "First Amendment absolutists," in fact the amendments simply reflects black letter law. One interesting part of the debate was that the judges with electronic filing experience liked it, saw no threat from public electronic access, and spoke in favor of the MDDC amendment.