§ 9-11-7.1.Redacted information; exceptions and filings under seal; correction; protective orders; waivers

Court files are public records, which makes them a poor place to leave a full social security number sitting in plain view. This section requires that filings containing a social security number, taxpayer identification number, financial account number, or birth date include only the last four digits of the number, or just the year of birth, unless the court orders otherwise or one of the statute’s own exceptions applies.

Garnishment gets its own rule: the summons filed with the court shows only the last four digits, but the plaintiff still has to give the garnishee and the defendant the full number on their copies when reasonably available. Subsection (c) exempts several categories from the general redaction rule outright — property identified in a civil forfeiture case, the official record of an administrative or agency proceeding or of another court, probate court filings, and anything already filed under seal.

Filers who need to put unredacted information before the court have paths to do that without exposing it to the public: petitioning to file under seal, attaching a reference list (itself sealed) that assigns identifiers to the redacted items, or seeking a protective order for other sensitive information not covered by the mandatory redaction list, including an order limiting a nonparty’s remote electronic access to a filing. An inadvertent failure to redact is a curable defect, not a basis to reject the filing outright, and a filer who submits their own information without redacting it and without sealing it waives the statute’s protections for that filing.