More court records soon available to public online

Missouri's courts will provide more public access to documents beginning Saturday, July 1.

The aim is transparency. The risk is exposing personal information to cybercriminals.

Attorneys across Missouri are training with the Missouri Bar to roll out more public access to files on Missouri Casenet — www.courts.mo.gov/cnet/welcome. do — the state's online database for court proceedings and documents.

Currently, many common records are not accessible to the public through the online database. Attorneys are granted secure access to documents through the website, but the public cannot access those records except at kiosks at a courthouse. Some courthouses' kiosks cannot print and/or do not allow for the downloading of documents.

Beginning in July, based on a directive by the Missouri Supreme Court, more documents will be accessible to the public from their computers. The upgraded, more-accessible system will roll out in phases across the state. Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court is expected to update its system in October, though new requirements will kick off for attorneys July 1.

The mandated requirements are an attempt to fulfill the state's policy that "records of all courts are presumed to be open to any member of the public for purposes of inspection or copying".

The changes made July 1 will not mean documents once considered confidential — such as judicial work product, internal electronic mail; memos or drafts or appellate judicial case assignments; and parental plans — will now be open. Juvenile records will remain closed records as well. The rules regarding the confidentiality of certain records will remain the same.

But public documents once held only in courts will soon be available for anyone with internet access. This shift in accessibility emphasizes the importance that attorneys properly redact private and sensitive information.

Attorney responsibilities

Missouri's courts are largely placing the liability risk of unintentionally releasing personal information on attorneys and removing that responsibility from courts and court clerks. The law requires attorneys to redact certain information.

Beginning July 1, attorneys or any person filing a document with the court will be required to certify that all the documents filed will be properly redacted. The court rule holds the filer "solely" responsible for redacting the information.

Depending on the type of case, court documents can include many kinds of sensitive and personal financial information, even credit or debit card numbers, all of which could harm a witness or litigant if released online. Other types of information in certain situations can also cause harm, such as the names and addresses of confidential informants, witnesses or those under a protection order. Dates of birth also should be redacted to prevent scam artists from creating false accounts with personal information.

While the Missouri Bar points out that rules for redacting will not change, the risk of exposing sensitive information will rise along with expanded access.

"One of the big changes in remote access is that it removes an earlier practical obscurity to documents that were filed but were not remotely accessible," said Jeffrey Bates, a judge with the Missouri Court of Appeals, Southern District, in a training video to attorneys. "It was very common to file all kinds of documents at the courthouse or even in Casenet, but if no one can look at them, there is little likelihood that any confidential information contained therein could harm anyone. With new expanded remote access, that danger is heightened to a large degree, so the Supreme Court has recognized that and is implementing redaction requirements to protect litigants from information that is confidential that is being shared on the internet with folks who shouldn't be looking at it.

"Most importantly, courts and clerks will not review each case document to ensure compliance and will not refuse to accept or file a document ... so this is on the filer, and the courts and clerks will not be able to help you."

The Missouri Bar is providing instruction on the proper process and technology for the redaction of documents.

The changes do not require lawyers to redact more than they previously did, according to the Missouri Bar. Each area of law has rules guiding what must be redacted, but generally, Social Security and driver's license numbers, certain identifying information and names of juveniles are among the information requiring redactions.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in April that a reader had contacted the newspaper after learning his SSN was publicly visible on Casenet. The newspaper independently learned SSNs were visible on all documents of a specific type of civil court document.

Missouri District Defender Katie New said she and the attorneys in the public defenders' office are keeping a close eye on the public access changes. She said she and her staff have done a lot of training, particularly on the issue of redaction. She acknowledged proper redaction and the corresponding legal responsibility for such is "of course, a very important issue." For the most part, New said, she wants to see how everything plays out before offering an opinion on the new redaction certification rule.

The changes were announced to the public June 29, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court of Missouri approved the rule changes to expand the public's access to records.

"With the assistance of Missouri's Court Automation Committee, a statutory entity comprised of members from all three branches of government, the judiciary has been working toward this goal for a number of years," Chief Justice Paul C. Wilson said in the announcement. The order "will ensure court documents that are currently open to the public will be truly accessible to the public. These improvements will fundamentally change the way individuals access public court documents while balancing the need to protect confidential information and ensure the overall security and reliability of our underlying case management system."

The changes come at a time when data breaches have become common, resulting in millions of dollars in class-action lawsuit settlements. For that reason, the federal courts, following data breaches in 2020 that compromised its public court document access system, instituted new policies that highly sensitive court documents filed with federal courts will be filed only in paper form or on a secure thumb drive and stored in a stand-alone computer system.