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