Public access to judicial proceedings used to be simple—when one could simply walk into a courtroom and sit down, New York Civil Liberties Union staff attorney Veronica Salama told a group studying the state court system’s pandemic practices Monday.

But because of the coronavirus, the courts have been operating under a “new normal” of virtual proceedings since April 2020, and at the same time had been holding civil proceedings without a means for the public to freely attend and observe them, said Salama, who was one of nearly 30 invited witnesses of the Commission to Reimagine the Future of New York’s Courts public hearing at the New York City Bar Association.