New York lawmakers have tried to protect the state’s youngest residents from harmful paper trails that may hobble their lives.
Last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Clean Slate Act, which automatically seals the records of anyone convicted as a teen or young adult. A second law in 2023 expunges the records of children who appeared in New York courts for misbehavior such as running away, skipping school or disobeying a parent. And the state’s Family Court Act requires that arrest records be sealed in cases involving minors who were ultimately not found to be delinquent. Those records shall not be “made available to any person or public or private agency,” according to the statute.
But a recent class action lawsuit filed on behalf of three teenagers accuses New York City police officers of violating that law. In court documents, lawyers with the Legal Aid Society and Milbank LLP allege that New York City’s police department has illegally accessed, used and disclosed minors’ sealed arrest records. The suit seeks to end the practice, better protecting the rights of thousands of predominantly Black and Latino youth between the ages of 7 and 17.
“The purpose of keeping juvenile records sealed is not only to prevent young people from facing undue prejudice from police and prosecutors, but also to ensure they have full and fair access to employment, educational, and housing opportunities in the future,” Legal Aid Society attorney Kate Wood said in a press statement.
The case filed on behalf of three New Yorkers identified only by their initials — N.C., A.T. and J.P. — is now before the New York County Supreme Court.
A spokesperson for the New York City Police Department declined to comment on the pending litigation.
According to court filings, N.C., was arrested in November 2018 at age 14 following an altercation with her mother, but the prosecutor declined to bring charges. Later, the city’s Administration for Children’s Services removed the young teen from her mother’s custody due to allegations of abuse and neglect.
N.C., now a 19-year-old in foster care, was never convicted of a crime, the lawsuit states, and thus under state law, the arrest should have been sealed.
But one day in spring 2023, N.C. and a friend attempted to transfer from a city bus to the subway. At the Broadway Junction stop, N.C.’s bus transfer did not register on the card reader. When the friends later entered the subway through a platform door, police stopped the teens and demanded identification. When officers looked up N.C.’s personal information on a mobile device, the 5-year-old arrest popped up and they questioned her about it, even though that record should have been sealed, N.C.’s lawyers assert.
On behalf of N.C. and two other teens they say were similarly wronged, the legal advocates want the court to declare the police department’s practice illegal, and order it to stop.
Arrest records like N.C.’s are sealed because the young person was never found delinquent in court, said Emma-Lee Clinger, another staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society. “There was never a finding of guilt in the first place, so the presumption of innocence gets thrown out the window if we’re sharing these records.”
The class action lawsuit comes amid ongoing statewide efforts to prohibit authorities from sharing information about minors’ prior interactions with law enforcement. Not all proposed laws have passed, but the reform efforts include curbs on the longstanding practice of collecting and storing the DNA of arrested minors — even those never ultimately accused of a crime. Such use of genetic material collected by police has long been under scrutiny in New York, with legislative fixes proposed on the city and state level.
State legislation pushed since 2021 would require records in certain juvenile delinquency cases in family court, including arrest records, to be automatically expunged. And a bill introduced last year would make a public official’s release of sealed juvenile police records a class A misdemeanor.
In the ongoing class action suit against New York City police, a key issue is the department’s interpretation of the Family Court law. Legal advocates for youth say police are using sealed internal records illegally, in some instances when making decisions about whether to detain a minor or take them into custody.
As evidence, the plaintiffs cite several internal police department documents, including instructor notes on a training presentation stating that “there is no prohibition in the NYS Criminal Procedure Law or otherwise which prohibit the Department’s internal access to sealed records for investigatory purposes.”
Officers also regularly use sealed records in their patrol work, the lawsuit alleges, which affects how they handle young people’s cases. Seventeen-year-old J.P. ended up on a department “recidivist list” based on the record of a sealed prior arrest in 2022.
“Even though the records for this prior arrest are sealed,” court filings state, a summary report “discloses J.P.’s name, date of birth, the date of arrest, and the most serious, or ‘top,’ crime the NYPD charged for the prior arrest.”
Use of such records can be particularly problematic, youth advocates say, because most arrests of minors result in no finding of guilt. From 2019 to 2022, more than three-quarters of the 1,219 cases involving misdemeanor charges against youth in New York State were decided in the young person’s favor with no delinquency charges sustained, according to state data cited by the plaintiffs.
“The purpose of keeping juvenile records sealed is not only to prevent young people from facing undue prejudice from police and prosecutors, but also to ensure they have full and fair access to employment, educational, and housing opportunities in the future.”
— Kate Wood, Legal Aid Society
Other troubling uses cited in the lawsuit are police turning over arrest information contained in sealed records to prosecutors. In the case of 19-year-old A.T., the District Attorney’s office obtained dates, locations, specific charges, and descriptions of what led to his prior, sealed arrests, — even though sharing of that information is prohibited under the law, according to legal filings. That information can convince prosecutors to push for a minor’s case to be heard in adult court rather than the more youth-friendly family courts.
Attorneys for the three New York City teens also accuse the police department of leaking sealed records to the press, describing the practice as problematic for the young people involved.
The lawsuit cites two New York Post articles in which police sources describe young people’s prior sealed arrest records. A November 2021 story, citing “law enforcement sources” shows a detailed arrest history of a 17-year-old and notes that his prior “gun cases from Family Court remain sealed.” In the July 2022 story, “police sources” told the reporter about a young person’s two prior arrests in which he was “released both times, with each case sealed.”
Attorney Clinger said that type of news coverage affects young people’s prospects for employment, education and housing — all the stability and progress youth need to stay clear of becoming entangled with the justice system. Internet searches that reveal arrests do not always specify they led to no finding of guilt.
“I’ve worked with a lot of adults who have juvenile records,” Clinger said. “And every single one of them carries this weight of the stigma of their prior arrest and the fear that it’s still hanging over their heads.”
