The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

Opinion

Discussion

March 25, 2008

Court record ruling seems beneficial for Oklahomans

It’s good to see the Oklahoma Supreme Court has come to its senses regarding restricting public access to court records.

The court reversed its order that would have restricted online access to public court records. The reversal was supported by free-speech advocates, journalists, law enforcement court clerks and businesses.

The reversal of this ruling goes to show how effective public concern and criticism can be in stopping a bad rule or a bad law.

The new rules were intended to prevent identity theft from people who have online access to court records. The rules would also have required Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses be excluded from public documents.

The negative reaction to this ruling was swift and immediate. There are important and compelling reasons why this information should remain in the court documents that are available online.

First and foremost is the importance of providing more information online, not less. This ruling would have been a sweeping reversal of the trend to provide more public records and information for online access. It would have been a giant leap backward in providing access to the public.

Second is the need for many users of such court documents to have access to identifier information, primarily birth dates. We can understand restricting access to Social Security numbers, but taking out birth date information could have led to people being misidentified for public information purposes.

This reversal by the court is good news for the taxpayers of Oklahoma. It appears the court did not fully realize or understand the overwhelming use of these records by all citizens of Oklahoma.

At one point, the court had recommended a task force to work on limiting the risks of identity theft due to these records. Though there was no mention of that during the court’s reversal, we think it would be a good idea to pursue. This is what should have happened in the first place instead of a sweeping closure of online records.

The taxpayers of Oklahoma have won in this case, and we applaud the Oklahoma Supreme Court for finally doing the right thing.

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