In a significant rebuke to the New York state court system, an official transparency watchdog has stated that the current restrictions on public access to judges’ financial disclosures violate the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). This finding follows an investigation by Law360 revealing that top New York state judges had ignored a gift and income reporting rule. Instead, senior judges had modified the ethics canon and included less detailed questions about financial disclosures in annual forms.
When Law360 requested these disclosures, the Office of Court Administration (OCA) and its Ethics Commission restricted access and required nearly 1,500 individual forms to be filed with each judge’s name and title. This process was deemed inconsistent with FOIL requirements by the Committee on Open Government, which argued that it effectively amounted to a denial of access.
A spokesperson for the state court system did not immediately respond to a request for comment. New York State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris has introduced a bill mandating that all judicial disclosures be posted publicly. The full report and additional details can be found here.