Athens County Municipal Court, Ohio Sealing & Redaction Procedures

CRITICAL

A party may file an unredacted document under seal with Court permission and must move to seal it; the judge may require a redacted public copy.

B. With permission of the Court, a party may file, under seal, a document containing the un-redacted personal data identifiers listed above. 1. The party seeking to file an un-redacted document shall file a motion to file the document under seal. 2. In granting the motion or application to seal, the assigned judge may require the party to file a redacted copy for the public record.

CRITICAL

Documents filed under seal must not be e-filed, scanned, or uploaded to the case management system and must be maintained in paper form.

Documents filed under seal shall not be filed electronically or scanned by the clerk into electronic format nor uploaded to the court’s case management system. The Clerk shall maintain all documents filed under seal in this Court in paper form only.

CRITICAL

Filing parties must omit or, when inclusion is necessary, partially redact the listed identifiers and proprietary or trade-secret information from pleadings, documents, and exhibits, unless the assigned judge orders otherwise.

A. Filing parties shall omit or, where inclusion is necessary, partially redact the following personal data identifiers from all pleadings, documents, and exhibits, unless the assigned judge orders otherwise: 1. Social security numbers except for the last four digits; 2. Driver’s license number; 3. Financial account numbers, including but not limited to debit card, charge card, and credit card numbers; 4. Employer and Employee identification numbers; 5. A juvenile’s name in a complaint or associated document, except for the juvenile’s initials or a generic abbreviation such as “CV” for child victim; 6. Proprietary or trade secret information.

WARNING

The filing party alone is responsible for redaction, and the Clerk’s Office will not review documents for compliance or redact them.

C. The responsibility for redacting personal data identifiers (i.e., social security numbers and bank/credit card numbers) rests solely with the filing party. D. The Clerk’s Office will not review the documents for compliance with this rule or redact documents.

WARNING

Sealed or expunged documents and case records are unavailable for public disclosure.

4. If, however, a document or case record is sealed or expunged, it is unavailable for public disclosure.

INFO

The Court may order an eviction record redacted when the interests of justice outweigh the government’s and public’s interests in maintaining the public record.

The Court may order the Clerk to redact an eviction record when the interest of justice in redacting the record outweighs the interests of the government and the public in maintaining a public record of the case, pursuant to Sup. R. 45(E).