Law360 (October 21, 2026, 5:24 PM EDT) -- Modern technology necessitates updated court-access rules, a representative for a University of Michigan professor told a Sixth Circuit panel Wednesday, saying that citizens should have access to audio and video recordings of public court proceedings in addition to written transcripts.

Legal intern Sophia Miller of Case Western Reserve University School of Law, representing plaintiff Samantha Hallman, argued that while Michigan's district and circuit courts make written transcripts available to citizens for a fee, audio and video recordings are not available in all state courts. Not giving access to recordings, Miller said, is a First Amendment violation.

"You have a proceeding that is open, transcripts are available, but recordings are secret," Miller told the panel.

Hallman filed a federal suit in Michigan in April 2025 after she asked for various court recordings from Oakland County Circuit Court and the 52nd District Court in Novi and her requests were denied, sometimes in part and sometimes in full. The recordings she requested were for proceedings involving Hallman's brother.

Hallman named Judges Travis Reeds and Lisa L. Asadoorian of the 52nd District Court and Judge Jeffery S. Matis of the Oakland County Circuit Court as defendants in the suit.

A Michigan federal judge dismissed the case, saying that recordings of court proceedings are not protected by the First Amendment. Hallman appealed that decision to the Sixth Circuit.

U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton asked if making the availability of the recordings a constitutional issue instead of a state law issue might prompt courts to stop recording proceedings in order to circumvent making them available to the public.

"It creates a disincentive to have recordings and strikes me as undermining the whole goal of this litigation," Judge Sutton said. "Constitutionalizing this could lead to the opposite of what you are trying to do, and I wonder if we are really helping things by doing this."

Judge Sutton told Miller he might be more inclined to allow supplemental briefing to show what the different states do to handle requests for court recordings.

"I really think these are legal points; I don't think this is a fact case," Judge Sutton said.

Counsel for the Michigan courts, William H. Horton of Giarmarco Mullins & Horton PC, told the panel that all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal courts have established statutes to address the issue of recorded proceedings and their availability to the public and that it is an issue of public policy, not constitutional law.

"Sometimes there is a constitutional issue lurking somewhere in the background and it needs a compelling set of facts to illuminate that constitutional issue," Horton told the panel. "This is not that case."

Horton told the panel that prior to courts making audio and video recordings of proceedings, a stenographer took notes from which transcripts were created. Now, courts use the audio recordings to create the transcript. While transcripts are available upon request if a citizen pays for them, recordings fall into the same category as the stenographer's notes, Horton said, and do not have to be made available.

"Stenographer notes were not turned into transcripts automatically and that was not done for free," Horton argued. "In Michigan, it has been decided that the official record of court proceedings will be in the written transcript."

U.S. Circuit Judge Karen Nelson Moore said there is a right for members of the public to be in the courtroom and the advantage of new technology is allowing that access to people who may not be able to attend a court proceeding in person.

Horton argued that in Michigan, the audio and video recordings of court proceedings are not official court records and only the written transcript of the proceedings is considered to meet that criteria.

U.S. Circuit Judges Jeffrey S. Sutton, Eugene E. Siler Jr. and Karen Nelson Moore sat on the panel for the Sixth Circuit.

Samantha Hallman is represented by Brian D. Bardwell of Speech Law LLC, Sara Elizabeth Coulter of Case Western Reserve University School of Law and Andrew Casey Geronimo of Pattakos Law Firm LLC.

Travis Reeds, Lisa L. Asadoorian and Jeffery S. Matis are represented by John R. Fleming and William H. Horton of Giarmarco Mullins & Horton PC.

The case is Samantha Hallman v. Travis Reeds et al., case number 25-2166, in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. 

--Editing by Kelly Duncan.

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