Reclaim the Records: “In New York we WON and freely published the New York State death index for 1880-2017. We helped to defeat a detrimental state vital records proposal that the state Department of Health had snuck into the budget, and we even supported new state legislation, our first time working in the statehouse instead of just the courthouse. In Pennsylvania, we continued our never-ending litigation, working to ensure that millions of digital public records (including birth and death certificates) can be returned to free public use, instead of existing solely behind a multi-billion dollar monopoly’s expensive paywall. In Connecticut, a new lawsuit was launched…against one of our directors…after we won from the state the first-ever release of the state birth index through 2020. We’re also steeling ourselves for a big new legal fight with the VA, after it stopped providing valuable veterans records this past summer. We continued to reap the benefits of our previous successful lawsuit in Missouri, and updated our Missouri birth and death index websites with the latest annual data releases. And we collected never-before-public records from multiple states (without the need for lawsuits!) that will be released throughout the next few months, including particularly in Massachusetts — coming soon to an inbox near you!

• We wrote a multi-page Year In Review update hosted on our website.