Rule 4 - Privacy Protection for Filings Made with the Court(a) REDACTED FILINGS. (1)Required Redactions. Unless the court orders otherwise, a party or nonparty must redact, in an electronic or paper filing with the court, an individual's social-security number and taxpayer-identification number and a financial-account number, except that a party or nonparty making the filing may include the following:(A) the acronym "SS#" where the individual's social-security number would have been included;(B) the acronym "TID#" where the individual's taxpayer-identification number would have been included; and(C) the last four digits of the financial-account number.(2)Permitted Redactions. Unless the court orders otherwise, a party or non-party, in an electronic or paper filing with the court, may use a minor's initials in place of the minor's name.(b) FILINGS MADE UNDER SEAL. The court may order that a filing be made under seal without redaction. The court may later unseal the filing or order the person who made the filing to file a redacted version for the public record.(c) PROTECTIVE ORDERS. For good cause, the court may by order in a case:(1) require redaction of additional information; or(2) limit or prohibit a nonparty's remote electronic access to a document filed with the court.(d) MOTION FOR ADDITIONAL UNREDACTED FILING UNDER SEAL. A person who makes a redacted filing and wishes to file an additional unredacted copy must file a motion to file an unredacted copy under seal. If granted, the court must retain the unredacted copy as part of the record.(e) WAIVER OF PROTECTION OF IDENTIFIERS. A person waives the protection of Rule 4(a) as to the person's own information by filing it without redaction and not under seal. If a person includes his or her own information by mistake, the court may permit the person to withdraw the filing and replace it with a redacted version.(f) RESPONSIBILITY TO REDACT. The responsibility for redacting these personal identifiers rests solely with the person making the filing.COMMENT TO 2017 AMENDMENTS
The privacy protections for filings were previously addressed by Civil Rule 5(f), which was made applicable to civil protection order proceedings by former Rule 1. New Rule 4 is modeled after the civil rule, but it has been modified to reflect the unique nature of civil protection order proceedings, where minors' names and dates of birth are often necessary to provide the respondent with notice of the allegations or requested relief.
Requests for continuance are now addressed in Rule 7.