By Michele Evans / NYweeklyRecord.com / Date: 9/30/2026
Category: Criminal Courts / Court Administration / Government Accountability / Public Records
NEW YORK CITY, NY – New York court administrators must release 22 legal memoranda that were sent to judges with guidance on how to interpret and apply the law, a unanimous state appellate panel ruled Tuesday.
The Appellate Division, First Department, upheld an April order directing the Office of Court Administration to produce the records under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. The judges rejected OCA’s claim that the documents were protected by attorney-client privilege.
The ruling reaches beyond a records dispute. These memoranda concern the legal standards judges use in cases that can determine whether someone is jailed before trial, whether due process protections are enforced and how constitutional rights operate in New York courtrooms.
The New York Civil Liberties Union began seeking the records after a 2021 report revealed that OCA had circulated a confidential memorandum advising judges how to read an appellate decision involving due process. The group filed a FOIL request for similar memoranda issued during the prior decade. OCA denied the request, and the NYCLU sued in 2022.
The Court of Appeals ruled in 2025 that OCA could not declare an entire category of documents privileged before identifying and reviewing them. After the case returned to the trial court, OCA submitted 22 memoranda for private judicial review. State Supreme Court Justice Lyle E. Frank found that the records were not privileged and ordered their disclosure.
On appeal, the First Department said OCA still had not shown an attorney-client relationship between its counsel’s office and every judge in the Unified Court System. The panel also said the agency could not revive a separate FOIL exemption argument that it had abandoned earlier in the litigation.
The court distinguished legal guidance distributed by OCA from a judge’s confidential deliberations with law clerks and court attorneys. That distinction matters because FOIL does not apply to the judiciary itself, while OCA is an administrative agency subject to the public-records law.
OCA has argued that confidentiality protects the independence of judicial decision-making. The appellate court found that concern overstated in this case because the requested records came from the court system’s administrative counsel, not from a judge’s private deliberative process.
The decision does not reveal what each memorandum says, and the records had not been posted publicly as of Wednesday morning. The unanswered questions now are how quickly OCA will produce them, whether the agency will seek further review and whether the documents show that administrative lawyers tried to shape outcomes in criminal or civil cases.
For New Yorkers appearing in court, the stakes are concrete. Guidance that influences bail, evidentiary rules or constitutional protections can affect liberty, housing, family stability and access to justice. The ruling says the public is entitled to inspect that guidance when the state cannot prove a valid legal basis for secrecy.
The case is Matter of New York Civil Liberties Union v. New York State Office of Court Administration, First Department case number 2026-02147.
Sources
Appellate Division Decision and Order
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