Committee adopts amendment letting courts publish notices online; newspaper association warns of risks
Loading...
Summary
A policy provision in House File 3875 that would allow courts to publish certain statutory notices on their website rather than in newspapers was amended into the bill and adopted by the committee; the Minnesota Newspaper Association testified in opposition, citing reduced accessibility and loss of independent proof of publication.
The House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee on Tuesday adopted an amendment to House File 3875 that would permit the judicial branch to publish certain statutorily required notices on the court website as an alternative to newspaper publication.
Jeff Schorba, State Court Administrator, said courts already post notices and that web posting could be a more efficient option. He told the committee the judiciary currently spends roughly $250,000 per year on newspaper publication and that coordinating placement across 242 newspapers creates fiscal and staffing burdens.
Lisa Hills, executive director of the Minnesota Newspaper Association, opposed removing the newspaper-publication requirement. “Public notices placed in newspapers are a permanent record held by an independent third party,” Hills said. She warned that posting notices only on the judicial branch website could reduce accessibility to the people most likely to be affected and remove notarized affidavits of publication that help prevent due-process challenges. She noted the judicial website experienced an outage in February and pointed to a 2023 Kansas court website outage following a cyberattack.
Committee members probed both the fiscal and access trade-offs. Some members emphasized cost and administrative difficulty of arranging publication across many local papers; others expressed concern about equity and whether web-only publication would reach parties who rely on local newspapers or lack internet access.
The committee adopted the publication amendment (A1) by voice vote; HF3875, as amended, was laid over for further consideration in the policy omnibus process.
