(CN) - In a rare move, a presiding Ohio judge slammed his court's clerk in an op-ed in the latest development of a long-running legal power struggle over public access to eviction records.
Hamilton County Municipal Court Judge Josh Berkowitz called court clerk Pavan Parikh's actions "an alarming overreach of power" in the opinion published Wednesday in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The op-ed came on the heels of the Ohio Supreme Court upholding a previous ruling that Parikh, a Democrat who was re-elected in the 2024 election cycle, violated law by removing older eviction records from the court's website.
"The clerk defended his policy by citing the existence of paper copies at his office," Berkowitz wrote. "Sifting through a dusty box in the courthouse basement seems unfair, particularly when a public website of court records would provide no notice that such records exist."
Parikh's decision in 2022 affected thousands of records. Berkowitz said the judges sought an explanation for the decision, but Parikh wouldn't budge.
"Rather than posting the actual records, he replaced them with confusing legalese statements that would baffle even a sharp thinker like George Orwell," Berkowitz wrote. "Parikh refused to meet with me to discuss the matter and shut the door on any further negotiations."
When the judges requested him to abandon the policy, Parikh responded by suing the judges. His lawsuit lost at both the Ohio Court of Appeals and now the state Supreme Court.
In the process, Berkowitz said the doomed legal action cost taxpayers $61,000 as of October 2024, and that total has surely grown as it wound its way through the Supreme Court.
The Hamilton County Courthouse was closed for Juneteenth when Courthouse News attempted to reach Parikh for comment.
Along with fighting with judges over First Amendment access issues, Parikh is also engaged in a legal battle with Courthouse News over immediate access to new civil complaints. Courthouse News initially sued Aftab Pureval, current mayor of Cincinnati and former Hamilton County clerk of courts, in 2021 before Parikh took over in January 2022.
The suit seeks a declaratory judgment that the clerk's current policy of delaying access to complaints until after its employees "administratively process" them is unconstitutional and violates the First Amendment.
The delays come from the transition from traditional paper filing to e-filing. Courthouse News has been asking the state court clerk in Cincinnati since roughly 2014 for a return to the traditional system where new complaints cross the now-virtual counter instead of having to wait for docketing, or what is now called "processing." In its First Amendment actions, the news service argues that modern technology should illuminate the halls of government, not darken them.
Parikh, unsuccessfully, sought to have the case dismissed.
In dismissing the motion, U.S. District Judge Michael Barrett cited statistics provided by Courthouse News that showed over 41% of newly filed civil lawsuits were withheld from press and public alike for at least one day, while over 11% of cases had a two-day delay.
That case is ongoing with summary judgment motions pending.
Courthouse News has prevailed in similar cases throughout the country, including in the Eighth Circuit against Missouri.
Source: Courthouse News Service
