State Court Litigant Demographics Reporting

This research memo focuses on how and whether state court systems report on the race and gender of litigants in Family Court. The interest in this project grew out of work that Her Justice, a New York City-based legal services and policy/advocacy organization, is doing around reform in the New York Family Courts.  Her Justice recognized that the lack of robust and detailed data shared by the New York court administration can hinder advocacy for improvements to the system, and sought this research to shed light on laws and policies directing the collection and sharing of court data in New York and beyond. Organizations like Her Justice and others advocating for justice reform will benefit from this research in pushing for greater transparency of court system data in order to identify and achieve system reforms.