SC Courts Seek to Dismiss Scraping Case; May 2023 Trial Possible

A South Carolina data scraping case could get a trial on or after May 8, Judge Mary Lewis said in a Monday scheduling order at the U.S. District Court in Columbia. The NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union sued the South Carolina State Court Administration in March for banning automated data collection (see 2203300049). Discovery must be done by Jan. 4 and the deadline for mediation is March 20, ruled Lewis in case 3:2022-cv-01007. The state court defendants moved to dismiss the case. The federal court should abstain “because this case implicates decisions for which the common law and the state constitution have entrusted authority to” South Carolina’s judicial branch, they said Friday. “Plaintiff has no right to access data in the Judicial Branch’s control,” the defendants said. “The First Amendment requires no right of access,” but even if that right exists, “it is not unlimited and does not extend to the particular type of access sought by Plaintiff,” the state courts said. “Any minor hurdle to one particular user posed by the prohibition on scraping does not offend the First Amendment.”