The Cornell First Amendment Clinic is featured in a Cornell Chronicle article written by Susan Kelley, “How Cornell is educating the next generation of citizens about democracy.”
Read the full article here.
Month: June 2026
Clinic director Mark H. Jackson and Heather Murray, associate director of the Clinic and the managing attorney of its Local Journalism Project, led a discussion about their efforts to protect, defend and enable a free and vibrant press on June 24 at the Tompkins County Library in Ithaca, New York. The event was the second of four in The Ithaca Voice’s Conversation Series.
Mark and Heather spoke about their experience before being joined by Ithaca Voice managing editor Jimmy Jordan, senior reporter Megan Zerez and news reporter Hailea Potter for a panel discussion.
New York City’s media landscape is changing fast. As legacy outlets shrink and independent, nonprofit newsrooms step in to fill the gaps, a host of unsettled legal questions are coming to the fore — about press freedom, protecting sources, newsgathering rights, and even who counts as a journalist in the first place.
Attorneys and clients of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic discussed local journalism during an eCornell Keynote on Thursday, June 25. Panelists explored the state of local journalism and what the shifting media landscape means for public accountability. The Clinic’s Local Journalism Project sits at the center of these challenges, representing journalists and newsrooms across New York and beyond.
The moderated panel featured:
- Heather Murray, associate director of the First Amendment Clinic and managing attorney of its Local Journalism Project
- Michael Linhorst, the Clinic’s local journalism attorney
- Mazin Sidahmed, co-founder and executive director of Documented
- Gersh Kuntzman, editor-in-chief of Streetsblog
This is the first in a series of eCornell programs featuring the Clinic’s work — links to the rest of the series will be available soon.
Have you ever sent someone a text message to find out if they’re getting our text messages?
Sometimes you send the “test” to find out if there’s something wrong with their text messaging. Other times, you do it to send that person a message that they’re not returning your texts.
If you understand that scenario, then you’ll understand the method and message being sent by two open government advocates, who announced Tuesday that they are filing Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests with Gov. Kathy Hochul and the heads of 72 state agencies.
The advocates — Rachael Fauss, senior policy adviser to the government watchdog group Reinvent Albany, and Heather Murray, associate director of the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic and managing attorney of the Clinic’s Local Journalism Project — are seeking access to certain records maintained by agencies regarding FOIL requests submitted to them and/or responded to through a software program called GovQA.
These records are designed to let the public know how responsive state agencies are being to the hundreds of requests for information they receive each year from citizens. The FOIL requests also will serve to illustrate that many agencies are not taking full advantage the software program, which is costing taxpayers $650,000 a year to assist these agencies in responding to the public.
These 72 agencies cover virtually all state government functions. They maintain vital public information on government spending programs, policies, statistics, regulations and compliance with laws. In addition to your information they’re holding, that’s your tax money they’re spending and your life and your money and your communities that their decisions
are affecting.
Filing a FOIL request for FOIL responsiveness records isn’t just a clever stunt. The advocates want to reiterate a point Reinvent Albany reported in May that many state agencies are not using, or are failing to make full use of, GovQA.
GovQA — already used by California, Oregon and the city of Dallas to manage their public records access — enables New York’s state agencies to easily create searchable logs, accessible to the public, documenting FOIL requests and each agency’s response to them. It also can help reduce duplicative requests – if the agencies use it.The logs are essentially report cards on how well or how poorly the agencies are sharing information with public.
What all this means for the citizens of New York is that the state is not living up to its responsibility to be as transparent as it should be.
If Gov. Hochul is as serious about transparency as she has said she is, she’ll make sure that not only is this FOIL request honored quickly and completely, but that state agencies start being more responsive to the people’s right to know what their government is doing on
their behalf.
Reprinted with permission of The Daily Gazette. All rights reserved, ©Gazette News Group, Inc.
Click the link below to read Daniel R. Novack’s article in the ABA’s Human Rights Magazine about freedom of speech and its corollary, freedom to read, which are under assault in America. Novack, an attorney for Penguin Random House, works with the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic on book ban challenges.
The New York State Supreme Court ruled that the NYPD must release body-cam and dash-cam footage and other records related to a 2023 incident when officers drove into oncoming traffic and hit and killed a man on a dirt bike, after the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic sued to obtain the records on behalf of a media client. NYPD claimed that all of the records were sealed under Criminal Procedure Law section 160.50 – which seals records after a prosecution is terminated in favor of the defendant – because officers arrested the dirt biker shortly before he died, and then the charges were dropped after his death.
In his June 3 ruling, Judge Lyle E. Frank held that the sealing law does not apply in this “novel and unique” situation, and even if it did, the law still would not seal the body-cam and dash-cam footage. He also ruled that NYPD failed to show that any other exemption under the Freedom of Information Law applied.
“This is an important victory for public accountability,” said Michael Linhorst, the Clinic’s Local Journalism Attorney, who argued the case. “Under the NYPD’s theory, officers who killed a person would be able to permanently seal all the records showing what happened as long as they arrested the person for something before they died. That’s far from what the law requires. FOIL guarantees that the public can oversee its government, and that means obtaining records that show what actions police take on the streets of New York.”
Samuel Williams was riding a dirtbike in May 2023 when he was struck head-on by an unmarked NYPD vehicle that had crossed into oncoming traffic. With Williams critically injured, officers handcuffed him – reportedly while his broken leg jutted from his pants – before attempting to render aid. He died in a hospital the next day.
A journalist for The City Report, Inc., publisher of The City Reporter, filed three FOIL requests seeking the body-worn camera footage, other recordings obtained by the NYPD, and the closing memo issued by the Department’s Force Investigation Division. The NYPD claimed the records were sealed under section 160.50, and the Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic appealed.
During oral argument on June 2, Linhorst advanced three arguments. He said the sealing statute does not apply in these circumstances to allow the NYPD to hide the actions of its own officers that caused the death of a man who was not prosecuted. Some of the records sought have already been released by the Attorney General, and the facts surrounding his arrest and death have already been made public, so preventing their release would not shield the deceased from stigma. Second, even if the sealing statute applied, these are not the type of “official records” that would be sealed under the statute. The records sought are part of the normal course of NYPD business and are not records created for the purpose of prosecuting a case. Third, Linhorst said that none of FOIL’s other exemptions to public disclosure apply.
In his ruling, Judge Frank agreed that section 160.50 does not apply. He wrote that the body-worn camera and dashcam footage are not “official records” within the meaning of the statute, as they serve a purpose not inherently tied to any arrest or prosecution. Even if they were official records, the sealing statute only applies in carefully defined circumstances, and none were present here, despite the NYPD claiming that the facts fit into subsection (3)(i), which concerns situations where the prosecutor elects not to prosecute. “[T]here was no election that occurred in this instance, as it is undisputed that Mr. Williams was not prosecuted because he was deceased,” Judge Frank wrote. Similarly, the sealing statute could not be applied to the closing memo issued by the FID.
The court denied the NYPD’s additional claimed exemptions under Public Officers Law sections 87(2)(b) and 87(2)(e)(iv) as the arguments were first raised during litigation, not at the administrative level as required.
On June 8, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ Office of Special Investigation released its report on the death of Samuel Williams. OSI closed the matter, stating that the officers involved would not be prosecuted.
Read the client’s article for more background:
State AG Declines to Prosecute NYPD Officers Involved in Fatal Motorbike Crash, The City Reporter