NAACP, ACLU Challenge SC Courts' Data Scraping Ban

The South Carolina State Court Administration faces a lawsuit for its ban on automated data collection known as scraping. The NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union filed a suit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court in Columbia, South Carolina. The ban unconstitutionally restricts NAACP’s right to access and record public court records under the First Amendment, said the plaintiffs: Scraping would help NAACP find people who could soon be evicted from their homes. “The First Amendment protects the NAACP’s right to use digital-era methods of recording public docket information that is available to any internet user,” said Esha Bhandari, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project's deputy project director. The state court administration declined to comment Wednesday.