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Judges and clerks tell legislature searchable archives and mandatory streaming would strain courts and risk private data
Summary
Wyoming judges and court clerks warned lawmakers that mandatory archival posting and live streaming of hearings would create large redaction workloads, threaten confidentiality statutes and expose victims and minors; they urged staged implementation, robust funding, and stronger technical safeguards.
A panel of judges and clerks told the House Judiciary Committee that while they support broader access to justice, mandatory, searchable, internet‑facing archives of court records and live-stream requirements in House Bill 93 would create untenable workloads and serious privacy risks without clearer statutory guardrails and funding.
"Generally, we would not support this bill for a variety of reasons," Carbon County District Court Judge Donessa Snyder said, emphasizing that clerks are the custodians of records and that the bill would reach municipal courts over which the Supreme Court has no authority. Snyder and other judges described hazardous outcomes when proceedings are streamed and the resulting recordings are reposted on social platforms.
Judge Snyder described experiences in Colorado and said courts have encountered "disruptors" who have hacked or manipulated streams and, in one instance, shown "really problematic material to the point that 1 of the participants requested the court provide counseling services." Cheyenne circuit judge Sean Chambers and other judges echoed the privacy and operational concerns, and noted that existing redaction rules are imperfect: filings sometimes include minors' names or sensitive data that clerks currently lack the bandwidth to redact manually.
Clerks of district court said producing searchable document archives statewide would be a major implementation task. Mara Sanger, president of the clerks association and clerk in Carbon County, said many states only publish registers of actions online and still require document requests to the clerk. Anne Sutton (Teton County) warned that foundational case-management systems must be secure and correctly integrated before any expansion of public access: she cited instances where confidentiality flags did not transfer correctly between systems and said careful testing is essential.
What they asked for: judges and clerks urged a phased approach, a separate public-facing database of only public documents, strong redaction and scraping rules, and sustained funding for staffing, IT, and vendor support. Butler, the State Court Administrator, told the committee the branch anticipates a multi‑year effort and repeatedly flagged the need for "adequate funding" to implement the technical and policy safeguards.
