New York Court of Appeals Roundup: 'Red Scare' Records, At-Will Doctrine Exception, Confrontation Clause
In their monthly column in the New York Law Journal, Roy Reardon and Mary Elizabeth McGarry discuss a recent Court of Appeals decision in a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case of keen interest to historians and the press involving access to records of the Board of Education's decades-long "red scare" investigations of teachers. The Court held that the identities of individuals who had been named in interviews could not be redacted. However the identities of interviewees who had been promised confidentiality could be redacted to protect their privacy, at least while they and their children are alive. They also assess an employment action in which a divided Court (5-2) held that a hedge fund was free to fire a compliance officer who had confronted the fund's CEO about alleged improper conduct because the officer was an at-will employee. Finally, in a criminal action, the Court addressed for the first time whether a defendant can open the door to the admission of evidence otherwise inadmissible under the confrontation clause, finding that a defendant can do so, and in the case before it did.