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our fifty-third always stay gracious best revenge is your paper newsletter
The New York State Death Index, 1880-2017
We won. We won!
Hello again from your friendly neighborhood historical records nerds at Reclaim The Records. We have a very big victory to share with you today:
We just won the first-ever public release of the FULL New York State Death Index, from 1880 through the end of 2017. We won this data through a multi-year Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) suit filed against the largest government agency in the state, which eventually worked its way up the highest court in the state.
After years of litigation, the New York State Court of Appeals has just handed us a resounding win in Matter of Reclaim the Records v. NY State Department of Health, ordering the state Department of Health (DOH) to turn over numerous fields of information from the New York death index through 2017.
The Court of Appeals has also ordered the DOH to justify to a lower court judge through an "in-camera review" the withholding or production of any remaining data fields they might have in their possession, going field‑by‑field for all available years, with a legal presumption of public access for almost all of them. In total, RTR will be receiving information on more than ten million deceased New Yorkers, along with some "extra" fields of indexed information that the state has never released before. And for nearly half of these records, the official death information had never previously been accessible to the public in any form.
And as soon as they hand over the data to us, we’re going to publish everything online, for free, in both searchable and downloadable formats, without any restrictions or usage contracts or paywalls, so that neither the state nor commercial entities can ever withhold it again. Because that’s how we roll here. Public data belongs to — and will be returning to — the public!
OMG. What? How?!?!
Here’s how it went down. Back in 2021, we submitted our Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request to the New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH), asking them for copies of nearly all of the state’s extant death index records, covering all years from the start of state-mandated records collection in 1880 through the end of the year 2017. After asking the DOH politely, we were told no – twice.
What we really wanted was all the data, in text format, for every year, for the state of New York. That’s not too much to ask, right? So when they denied our FOIL request, we sued the government, because obviously.
And after nearly four years of work, three rounds of brief-writing and expert affidavits, two appeals to two different courts, and plenty of bureaucratic foot‑dragging, we finally heard the good news. Last Thursday, New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, finally said the magic words we’d been waiting for:
Give. The. Files. To. The. Public.
You guys…? We won. We won big.
Here’s the link to the Court of Appeals' decision and it’s so, so good, not only for what it says about public access to historical (and modern!) records, but for the way the court supported and even strengthened the state Freedom of Information Law itself. This ruling is a BFD not just for genealogists and historians, but for anyone who wants to ensure that government records mustbe accessible to the public.
We’ve also posted the full text of many other relevant court documents to our website, from our side and from the state, along with our wonderful amici(friend of the court briefs) that were submitted in support of our case, one of them from the Justice Committee (thank you, Gideon!) and one of them from two well-known professional genealogists who do a lot of work in Surrogates' Court (thank you Roger and Debra!). We also posted the formal press release we wrote up announcing our historic victory. Check them out!
And we would be remiss if we didn’t give a huge thank you to our primary attorney in this case, the indefatigable Michael Moritz, whose unusual background as a Big Law attorney by day and a Genealogist by night certainly came in handy when helping us craft the legal strategy for this case. You can watch the official video of Michael arguing for our case in front of the Court of Appeals, in case you want to see what it looks like when a panel of top state judges star in an episode of Law and Order: Special Genealogy Unit.
(We’ve also written a whole lot more nerdy discussion about the history of what years and fields and formats and images and datafiles (etc.) were and are available, and what we know we’re going to get in this win, and what we think we will likely get in this win. And it’s all online here on our website, if you want to nerd out with us about the details.)
Where do we go from here?
We’re not sure yet how long it will take to get the data from the DOH, even with the Court of Appeals’ order, but things should move faster now. We might even get the production of the "basic" fields of death index information before we hash out the legal status of all the other "extra" data fields. What we can say for sure is that as soon as we get the materials, we’ll clean the data, build search tools, and as always publish every last line in free, downloadable, reusable formats. Then we’ll turn to the next locked archive in the next jurisdiction, and do this again!
And we couldn’t do it without you guys!
Help Us Keep Fighting – Donate Today!
Reclaim The Records is a small but mighty organization that fights for public access to historical records. We don’t take government funding — we rely on grassroots support from people like you.
- If you believe in open records, transparency, and genealogical rights, please make a donation today.
- Every dollar goes directly toward legal efforts, public awareness campaigns, and the fight against record closures — and the fight forawesome new records acquisitions, like this one!
Here’s how you can support us, and our work. Thank you!
Because history should never be padlocked,
your happy friends at Reclaim The Records
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