For the past few years, California courts have made budget cuts that have delayed justice. Court workers have been furloughed and courtrooms have been closed because of the state's fiscal woes. Now, the California Judicial Council has a new scheme to generate income by requiring a $10 fee to access court papers. Some counties, like San Diego, have instituted fees for online access as well. These fees are wrong. Public records mean just that: they are open for public scrutiny without cost. Anyone should be able to go to their local courthouse or peruse a court website without paying a fee. (Parties to a case would not be charged.)
One of the most troublesome aspects of this plan, which came to light in media outlets last week, was that it was proposed without any public input. All sorts of people seek access to court records, including the media, which often relies on the documents to shine a light on alleged wrongdoing by companies, landlords, and others. Print outlets like ours have been severely affected by the recession and the decreased advertising revenue that accompanied it. Some four years after the recession, we have yet to return to the pre-bust days of increased page counts that are a direct result of increased ads. Most of our colleagues have fared no better. The San Francisco Chronicle made drastic cuts over the years and its parent, the Hearst Corporation, is now seeking deep payments from staffers for their health coverage.
These court fees would negatively affect newsgathering organizations as they work to bring important legal issues to the public's attention. Terry Francke, co-founder of the media-supported open-government group Californians Aware, said the fee would make it "prohibitive" for the media to cover the courts.
Ordinary citizens would also be adversely affected. They, too, often seek access to court records for a variety of reasons, and if this new fee is adopted, it's easy to spend hundreds of dollars looking up files. Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, thinks the $10 fee is "too much of a penalty on ordinary citizens' access to the legal system," as he told the Chronicle.
Lawmakers are considering the fees as part of what's called a trailer bill to the budget. We urge our legislators, state Senator Mark Leno and Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, to reject this plan, which would in essence put the courts behind an expensive paywall.