Cornell Law School’s First Amendment Clinic filed a lawsuit in state court on August 18, 2021, on behalf of veteran New York journalist Janon Fisher seeking records from the New York City's Office of the Mayor containing information about the qualifications of judicial nominees seeking appointment to influential court seats.

Candidates wishing to be considered for appointment to family, criminal, and civil courts must submit a job application in the form of a completed Uniform Judicial Questionnaire to the Mayor’s Advisory Committee on The Judiciary. The Questionnaire solicits information directly from candidates that is crucial to determining an aspiring judge’s qualifications and includes questions regarding a candidate’s educational attainment, litigation background, client representations, areas of substantive legal expertise, executive experience, and more.

While the trial court ruled that these applications must be released to the public with minimal redactions to shield private information, an appellate court late last year overturned the lower court, ruling that the Mayor’s Office can continue to withhold these applications in their entirety.

In the Clinic’s motion for leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals, we argue, among other things, that the Appellate Division gave undue weight to the fact that the word “confidential” is stamped on judicial applications “in upper-case letters and boldface,” and that it determined, with no basis, that redacting applications to address any legitimate privacy concerns would be “judicially unworkable.”

Update: Last updated March 13, 2024.

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