New York's Appellate Division, First Department has ruled that the Office of Court Administration must disclose internal memos it sent to judges instructing them on how to interpret statutes and court rulings, closing off the agency's last major argument for keeping the guidance secret. The Manhattan-based court found that OCA failed to prove any attorney-client relationship existed between its Counsel's Office and the judges who received the memos, and ordered the documents released.
A Five-Year Fight Over Hidden Guidance
The ruling, reported by amNewYork, caps a legal battle that began after New York Focus published a 2021 story exposing OCA's practice of issuing guidance to state court judges on how to read case law. That reporting, which first surfaced a leaked memo, prompted an OCA spokesperson at the time to confirm that sending internal legal guidance to judges was the agency's “normal practice,” according to New York Focus. The New York Civil Liberties Union has pushed for a complete record of these memos for five years, according to amNewYork's report, and both the NYCLU and the American Civil Liberties Union have fought to obtain them over that span.
After OCA denied the NYCLU's initial Freedom of Information request, the organization sued. Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lyle E. Frank ordered OCA in October 2022 to produce copies of all legal guidance memos and directives sent to state court judges dating back to 2011, a scope that NYCLU notes the trial court found sufficiently specific, rejecting OCA's intra-agency exemption claims. OCA appealed that order rather than comply.
Court of Appeals Rejected Blanket Secrecy
The case escalated to New York's highest court, which ruled in October 2025 that correspondence from OCA's Counsel's Office guiding judges on statutory or case-law interpretation is not categorically shielded by attorney-client privilege, per amNewYork. Instead, any privilege claim must be proven document by document, the court held, according to CaseMine's analysis of the decision. The Court of Appeals sent the privilege question back down to the trial court for an in camera review rather than resolving it outright.
Associate Judge Jenny Rivera went further in a partial dissent, arguing the memos should be disclosed immediately without any remittal, reasoning that no valid attorney-client relationship can exist when an administrative agency tries to advise neutral judges on their adjudicatory functions. She called the in camera privilege review unnecessary altogether, since the underlying attorney-client relationship was absent in the first place, per the same CaseMine account.
Twenty-Two Documents, One Firm Ruling
On remand, OCA submitted 22 documents for the trial court's review. The Supreme Court ruled that none of them were privileged and ordered their disclosure, according to amNewYork's reporting. The Appellate Division, First Department then affirmed that outcome, finding that OCA had not demonstrated any attorney-client relationship between its Counsel's Office and the judges of the Unified Court System broadly, and that the agency offered no additional evidence or authority to support its theory that it represented the judiciary as an organizational client.
The appellate panel also dismissed OCA's argument that disclosure would infringe on protections for judicial deliberations, finding that the agency's privilege claim conflated attorney-client confidentiality with the separate confidentiality that covers deliberations between judges and their own law clerks or court attorneys. That judicial-deliberation privilege is one the legislature recognized by excluding the judiciary itself from FOIL's reach, but it does not extend to communications between OCA's Counsel's Office attorneys and judicial staff, which remain subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law's Public Officers Law Article 6, according to the Committee on Open Government. OCA is reviewing the First Department's decision, per amNewYork.
What the Memos Actually Told Judges
One of the memos at issue concerned the 2021 *Crawford v. Ally* ruling, which held that courts should hold a hearing when a protection order could prevent litigants from returning home or threaten other basic necessities. Yet the leaked OCA memo instructed judges that *Crawford* “should not be read as to require live witnesses and/or non-hearsay testimony” when deciding whether to issue pre-trial orders of protection, according to New York Focus's original reporting. Defense attorneys later reported that judges across multiple boroughs applied *Crawford* in a highly restrictive manner following that guidance.
OCA's secret guidance was not limited to protective orders. The memos also covered how judges should apply state bail reform laws and involuntary mental health commitments under Kendra's Law, according to the ACLU. Civil rights groups sought a decade's worth of these memos specifically to evaluate their impact on vulnerable litigants.
Advocates Say Secrecy Harmed Defendants
Daniel Lambright said the public deserves to understand how the judicial system operates and what informs judges' decision-making, per amNewYork's report. In amicus filings, the Legal Aid Society argued that secret OCA directives prevent defense attorneys from understanding the undisclosed rationale behind judicial rulings, creating systemic barriers to effective representation for low-income New Yorkers. Public defenders noted that access to OCA's directives would let them litigate more effectively on behalf of their clients.
The Office of Court Administration is the administrative arm responsible for managing New York's state court system, overseeing staffing, budgets and policy responsibilities separate from judicial decision-making itself. That system is vast: it handles nearly 3 million case filings annually across more than 300 locations statewide, with over 3,300 state and local judges and an operating budget exceeding $3.2 billion for fiscal year 2027, according to the Queens Daily Eagle. Chief Administrative Judge Joseph A. Zayas oversees the system's budget and non-judicial operations statewide.
Legislative Fallout Still Playing Out
The controversy has already spilled into the legislature. In July, the New York City Bar Association endorsed the Promoting Pre-Trial Stability Act, which would codify mandatory due process hearings for temporary protection orders, noting that judicial compliance with *Crawford v. Ally* remained uneven across state courts following OCA's restrictive guidance memo, according to the New York City Bar Association. The proposed law would set uniform statutory timelines for hearings when protective orders remove accused individuals from their homes or families.
