Author: Bridget Bosworth

The Cornell Law School First Amendment Clinic scored an important win last week on behalf of its client Rockland County Business Journal. On July 9, the New York Supreme Court granted the Business Journal’s Freedom of Information Petition for the release of documents related to the county’s award of an $18 million contract for the construction of a new county animal shelter – a recognition that the public has the right to know how its tax dollars are being spent by its own government.

Judge John P. Collins, Jr., wrote a strong and stirring Decision underscoring the vital importance of the press in the functioning of our democracy:

“A free press is not an ornament of democratic government; it is one of its load-bearing walls. The First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press was written into our Constitution precisely so that an independent Fourth Estate could stand between the citizenry and the government that citizenry funds, watching, questioning, and, when necessary, exposing. …  A local journalist tracking how a public authority spends eighteen (18) million taxpayer dollars is engaged in exactly the work the First Amendment was written to protect — unglamorous, granular, and indispensable.”

The suit was brought in December 2024 after the Authority produced heavily redacted documents, withheld an entire category of records outright, and denied Traster’s administrative appeals. Judge Collins ruled that the Authority’s redactions and withholdings — justified only by boilerplate recitations of statutory language — “do not withstand scrutiny,” and ordered the records released within 30 days, with any continued redaction requiring a particularized, fact-specific justification submitted for the Court’s in camera review. Finding the Authority had no reasonable basis for denying the request, the court also granted Traster’s application for attorney’s fees and litigation costs, with the amount to be determined once production is complete.

From the Business Journal’s coverage of its win:“This ruling is a gift to the people of Rockland and to those living in New York, where FOIL laws are designed to hold government accountable. …Too often those seeking information give up because they are frustrated by a Goliath. Today was a win for every David that stays engaged in civic life and understands why it’s so important to have an open and transparent government.

Read the Rockland County Business Journal article here.

View case documents here.

The Cornell First Amendment Clinic represents journalist Chris Bragg and nonprofit news outlet New York Focus in a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case seeking New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s schedule and calendars, which the Clinic filed in Albany County Supreme Court on June 30, 2026.

The FOIL requests seek the governor’s daily schedules from October 1, 2024, to present, and the governor’s Outlook calendar and fundraising schedule from October 1 through November 1, 2025. Gov. Hochul’s office, the Executive Chamber, issued a blanket denial of the FOIL requests, claiming that all the records are shielded from public disclosure because they are intra-agency records until the Chamber posts sanitized versions on its website. These web versions of the governor’s calendars contain selected information and are subject to considerable delay — the most recent schedule available on the site is from September 2024, one year and nine months ago. 

“The public shouldn’t have to settle for a hand-picked highlight reel published nearly two years after the fact. New Yorkers have a right to know how their governor spends her days — who she meets with, what she prioritizes, and what she doesn’t,” said Clinic local journalism attorney Michael Linhorst. “Democracy depends on voters being able to see their government at work, not just the parts it chooses to show them.”

In its initial denial and subsequent appeal denial, the Chamber also cited four additional exemptions, claiming that some unspecified portions were attorney-client privileged, their disclosure would be an unwarranted invasion of personal property or could endanger the life or safety of the governor and her staff, and that they had to be withheld to guarantee the security of technology assets. The Chamber made the same arguments in 2014 when it sought to withhold Gov. Cuomo’s calendars, but it was unsuccessful.

The Clinic seeks a court order requiring the release of the documents.

Watch Chris Bragg discuss the case with Spectrum News here.

Read more about the case and view the filings here.

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.

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.

Watch the discussion here.

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.

Watch the eCornell Keynote here.

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.

View the June 16, 2026, editorial here.

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.

They Can Only Take Our Stories If We Let Them

Cornell First Amendment Clinic Advisory Board Member and Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law, Michael C. Dorf, authored “Support Local Journalism, Expand the Definition of Fraud, and Guard Against Boomerang Effects,” for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University’s blog Reconstructing Free Expression.

Read the full article here.