Court documents are public, whether online or on paper

"The Maine court system hopes to spend $15 million to digitize its records, but a judicial task force on transparency wants to block the public from accessing most of the online records. This is absurd. The documents are public records, and the judicial system will spend public money to turn paper records into digital documents.

A task force, made up mostly of legal advocates with just one media representative and one public member, recommends keeping most state court documents shielded from public view. They would create a two-tier system: One for lawyers, their clients and so-called “judicial partners” who could access any case files and one for the public who could not view case files online. This is unacceptable and runs counter to the task force’s charge..."

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