Opinion ID: 2755743
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Sealing of the Record on Appeal

Text: Ms. Simpson filed one volume of her appendix under seal. The court clerk’s office provisionally permitted the filing, but ordered her to state why these portions of the appendix should remain under seal. We allowed part (but not all) of the appendix to remain under seal. We have discretion to allow the sealing of documents if the public’s right of access is outweighed by other interests. Jetaway Aviation, LLC v. Bd. of Cnty. Comm’rs, 754 F.3d 824, 826 (10th Cir. 2014) (per curiam). “To overcome [the] presumption against sealing, the party seeking to seal records must articulate a real and substantial interest that justifies depriving the public of access to the records that inform our decisionmaking process.” Id. (internal quotation marks omitted). Ms. Simpson requested the sealing because the district court determined that a protective order was proper. By itself, this is not an - 19 - adequate justification for filing the documents under seal. Id. But Ms. Simpson adds that “[t]he District Court found that sealing the documents was necessary to prevent the dissemination of confidential medical and personal information not otherwise subject to disclosure as well as law enforcement policies and procedures that are not known and should not be known to the general public.” Statement for Filing Appendix Under Seal, at 1. The reference to “confidential medical and personal information not otherwise subject to disclosure” is too broad and conclusory to overcome the presumption against sealing. Jetaway Aviation, 754 F.3d at 827. The reference to “law enforcement policies and procedures that are not known and should not be known to the general public,” however, justifies sealing of the written documents in Volume II. This reason does not justify sealing of the DVD. The evidence depicted in the DVD is crucial to the parties’ arguments and the outcome. With such reliance on the DVD, we have no justification for continuing to keep the DVD out of the public record. As a result, we order unsealing of the DVD. - 20 -