Tomorrow morning the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) will hear two cases involving OpenCourt and the First Amendment press rights of a news organization to report information that was gathered legally in an open courtroom.

The hearing will both be live-streamed by the SJC (click “View Webcast”) at 9 a.m. and archived, though the archive will not be immediately available.

Both cases hinge on the status of the archives, and on restrictions to that archive that we believe to be unlawful prior restraints under the First Amendment.

In the first case, Commonwealth vs. Barnes, the defense attorney accidentally “blurted” the name of the alleged victim of sexual assault, a minor. We are arguing that under the First Amendment, the court does not have right to order us to redact the name, though as a responsible news organization, we would do so voluntarily, as well as redacting any other identifying information. The District Attorney’s office is arguing that the court should have the authority to order us to redact the entire hearing.

In the second case, Diorio vs. First Justice of the Quincy District Court, Diorio is arguing that by streaming and archiving his arraignment, OpenCourt is violating his right to a fair trial. We argue that to impose a restriction on the archiving of the video is an unconstitutional prior restraint.

Both the filings and the reply briefs are public and available for perusal.

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