On Wednesday February 21, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott handed down an opinion that per the state Public Information Act (PIA) all Texas county clerks were immediately prohibited from displaying the Social Security Number of a living person on county clerk records made available to the general public. The records affected include real property, liens, birth,death, marriage, and court records held by the County Courts. Since there was no logistical way for the clerks to realistically perform a redaction, a severe shut down in county services performed by county clerks ensued. All commerce associated with any business entity using these records in the normal course of business was immediately affected. Although the PIA pinion did not affect court records held by the county-based District Courts, a number of District Court Clerks also closed down record access to their felony, probate, and civil case records.
The ensuing panic was sufficient enough that on February 28th, Attorney General Abbott abated the opinion for a period of 60 days. This abatement will enable the Texas legislation and the county clerks to plan a course of action on how to deal with the edict. While is it uncertain what the final outcome will be, the probability is that the public will eventually be able to access redacted electronic images, or to access electronic and bound indexes then instruct the clerk to retrieve an edited or redacted copy of the document or image without the SSNs.
Click Here to read the opinion and abatement.