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Public denied access to video recordings of lower court proceedings May 31, 2025
A May 27 story in Michigan Advance says the ACLU has sued Oakland County to get them to make video recordings of court proceedings available to the public. Oakland County provides transcripts for a fee, but video recordings can only be viewed in the court library. The lawsuit says that since taxpayers fund the recordings, they should be allowed to have copies:
The issue has come up before, and Oakland County seems to be the prime offender. Senate bill 790 was introduced in February 2020 by Senator Jim Runestad. It required courts that made video recordings of proceedings to make them available to the public. The bill got a hearing before the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, but went no further. That hearing was recorded on video and you can see it here.
Several people gave testimony. All were in favor of making court videos available to the public. All were from Oakland County. One said it would put an end to the "bias and impartiality of judges and some very well-known and connected attorneys" and force judges to follow the rule of law. It would stop the "shenanigans" that go on in the courtroom and provide the basis for appeals. Another said it would reveal that lawyers were not telling the judge the whole truth.
One man claimed that he had been a "targeted defendant" because of his complaints about public officials at Redford Township meetings. His remarks start at 34:49 on the video. He began receiving citations for issues with his property that had not been a problem for years. He was brought before a judge nine times in one year, and his hearings were scheduled for times when there would be few if any observers in the courtroom: "a common tactic when they know they are going to do something inappropriate." He had two serious problems with Senate bill 790. One was that it did not force all courts to make video recordings. The other was that one of the acceptable ways courts could make the video available was to allow them to be viewed at the court.
In her remarks before the committee, Senator Johnson said that as Oakland County clerk, she was aware of the court video library, but her access was limited. She could only watch on the premises and take notes. But she could also purchase the transcript and compare it to her notes, and she found at times that the court order that came out of the proceeding was the complete opposite of what was agreed to in court. When she complained, she said, the price she was charged for transcripts quadrupled. Her own research revealed that there are lots of problems with the courts, and not just in Oakland County. People she has talked to about it at all levels in the system were surprised that she did not know.
The state court administrator does not keep track of which counties record videos of proceedings, but believes that most courts do. I did a few online searches to find out which ones record videos and make them available to the public. Here's what I found:
So of the 11 counties I checked, only two - Kalamazoo and Van Buren - provide videos of court proceedings to the public (for a fee). If they can do it, any of them can. They all should.
The plaintiff in the ACLU lawsuit is Dr. Samantha Hallman. She did a survey that was considerably more thorough than mine. At a January 2025 meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research in Seattle, she did a presentation of her study "Democratizing Court-Watching in the Digital Age: Exploring Individual Court Policies Regarding Access to Audio/Video Recordings in Michigan". The following is from a synopsis of her presentation. She examined written policies from 156 courts regarding public access to copies of audio/video recordings of court proceedings. This is what she found:
The lawsuit says this about Dr. Hallman:
Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com or call or text me at 517-730-2638. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.
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Senator
Ruth Johnson was one of the committee members. She represents the 24th
District, which includes portions of Oakland, Macomb, Genesee and Lapeer
counties. She was Michigan’s secretary of state from 2011 to 2018 and
later Oakland County clerk/register of deeds. After that, she served 10
years on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners and then three terms
in the Michigan House of Representatives before election to the Senate
in 2017. Her comments start at minute 40:05 on the video.