{"id":224998,"date":"2026-03-18T10:56:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T14:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/18\/ny-judges-trans-privacy-rulings-overturned-on-appeal\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T12:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T16:15:10","slug":"ny-judges-trans-privacy-rulings-overturned-on-appeal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/18\/ny-judges-trans-privacy-rulings-overturned-on-appeal\/","title":{"rendered":"NY judge\u2019s trans privacy rulings overturned on appeal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/politics\/states\/judge-refuses-sealing-transgender-records\">NY judge\u2019s trans privacy rulings overturned on appeal<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/politics\/states\/judge-refuses-sealing-transgender-records\">https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/politics\/states\/judge-refuses-sealing-transgender-records<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-18 10:56:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.advocate.com\">www.advocate.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>A New York judge has come under fire for repeatedly declining to seal records for transgender people legally changing their names.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Keep up with the latest in <\/strong><strong>LGBTQ<\/strong><strong>+ news and politics. <\/strong><strong>Sign up for The Advocate&#8217;s email newsletter.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>New York State Supreme Court Justice James Walsh has, over the past two years, declined to seal records, including once for a 13-year-old, only to see appellate courts overrule his decision, according to the Times Union in Albany.<\/p>\n<p>The judge, who declined to speak on cases to the newspaper, in court proceedings offered reasoning that \u201cpublic interest concerns\u201d such as background checks and genealogy records outweighed fears of online harassment, work discrimination, or the risk of hate crimes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related<\/strong>: Judge nixes Justice Department subpoena of telehealth trans health care provider <\/p>\n<p><strong>Related<\/strong>: Federal court rejects Trump Justice Department\u2019s effort to access trans kids\u2019 medical records<\/p>\n<p>An appellate judge, in a February decision overturning Walsh, noted the history of his rulings. \u201cWe are once again confronted with the denial of a sealing request in a Civil Rights Law article 6 proceeding \u2014 by the same Supreme Court justice \u2014 predicated on amorphous \u2018public interest concerns,\u2019\u201d wrote Appellate Judge Eddie J. McShan in a ruling.<\/p>\n<p>The habit of denying privacy concerns for transgender New Yorkers drew media attention last year, when Them noted the Supreme Court Appellate Division, on the same day, overturned three rulings by Walsh denying record seals on name changes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn a \u2018customary\u2019 case like this one, protecting the applicant from the threat of harm posed by an open court record of a name change proceeding necessarily takes priority over the public\u2019s ability to access that court record,\u201d wrote Appellate Justice Sharon A.M. Aarons in a decision at the time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related<\/strong>: Conservative Supreme Court justices curb California\u2019s effort to shield transgender students from forced outing<\/p>\n<p>Walsh did not deny requests to change the&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/politics\/states\/judge-refuses-sealing-transgender-records\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NY judge\u2019s trans privacy rulings overturned on appeal https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/politics\/states\/judge-refuses-sealing-transgender-records Publish Date: 2026-03-18 10:56:00 Source Domain:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224999,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.advocate.com\/media-library\/supreme-court-justice-james-e-walsh-sitting-in-his-robe.jpg?id=65315330&width=1200&height=600&coordinates=0%2C39%2C0%2C39","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224998"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224998"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225000,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224998\/revisions\/225000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}