Iowa court officials agree to make new lawsuit filings available to public sooner

Iowa will soon provide what one plaintiff calls “contemporaneous” access to newly filed court cases under a settlement with news publishers who argued delayed access to court filings violated the First Amendment.

Lee Enterprises, a nationwide newspaper publisher headquartered in Davenport, and national news service Courthouse News sued the state’s court administrator and Polk County clerk of court in May 2023 to demand better processing procedures for newly filed lawsuits.

In the era of paper court records, such petitions were usually open for the public to review at the clerk’s office — in Polk County, in a wire frame basket on the counter, according to the complaint. But the transition to electronic court filings meant that in Iowa, new court petitions go first to a nonpublic database to await processing by court staff. Only once those administrative steps are complete, sometimes days or a week after filing, is a petition made available to the public via Iowa Courts Online.

In their lawsuit, Lee and Courthouse News Service argued there’s no reason for this delay. Many courts, including federal courts, make new filings automatically available online even before official processing is complete. And because the media has a First Amendment right to view and report on these documents, any policy delaying their access to new filings must be justified by, and narrowly tailored to, “an overriding governmental interest,” the suit said.

In the settlement, reached March 13, the state has agreed to adjust its handling of new petitions. A copy of the settlement agreement provided by the Iowa Attorney General’s Office shows the state, without admitting wrongdoing, will pay nearly $80,000 to cover the plaintiffs’ attorney fees and work to create a new access option to allow public viewing of pre-processing civil petitions.

The settlement requires the judicial branch to add a new link on Iowa Courts Online, the courts’ online system for accessing court files, giving access to pre-processing filings. The new link will be available to registered Iowa Courts Online users who have completed the proper user agreements. The parties told the judge it could take until mid-April to put the settlement fully in effect.

“We are extremely pleased with the outcome we were able to reach (with court officials),” Courthouse News Editor Bill Girdner said in a statement. “The state’s willingness to wrestle with and rectify the harm posed by the delays in public access experienced under the previous system is laudable. Iowa’s system will now be a model of openness and public access for other states in the region and across the country.”

The attorney general’s office, which represented the defendants, provided a copy of the settlement but did not have any other comment. Plaintiffs’ attorney Herb Giorgio, in a statement, commended the state’s attorneys for their work to resolve the dispute.

Iowa isn’t the only state where Courthouse News has litigated over immediate access to lawsuits. The company settled a similar lawsuit with Missouri in February after a three-year battle, and cases are pending in Idaho and in Oregon., among other past and ongoing litigation. On May 15, Courthouse News filed another case, this one against South Dakota.