Opinion ID: 4181297
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Reasonably Thorough Analysis

Text: NEPA regulations require agencies to “[r]igorously explore and objectively evaluate all reasonable alternatives, and for alternatives which were eliminated from detailed study, briefly discuss the reasons for their having been eliminated.” 40 C.F.R. § 1502.14(a). The regulations note that “[t]his section is the heart of the environmental impact statement.” Id. § 1502.14. 24 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY Here, the EIS’s listed “alternatives” are quite similar to each other. Aside from the “no action” alternative, the proposed actions all involved building a second explosives handling wharf at an identical location, adjacent to EHW-1, differing only in some of their construction and support details. The Navy’s listed alternatives, although narrow in scope, were “reasonable” in light of its operational goals. The overriding goal of the project was reaching an operational capacity of at least 400 days per year at Kitsap. One possible alternative to building a second wharf, expediting the repair of EHW-1, would not suffice, as it would provide only around 300 operational days per year.7 Given the Navy’s goal of 400 operational days per year, it is clear that EHW-1 on its own would be inadequate even after repair. Finding another location for the wharf was not feasible, because EHW-2 had to be located where the water was deep enough for submarine operability but shallow enough to permit the wharf’s construction. True, “an agency cannot define its objectives in unreasonably narrow terms.” City of Carmel-by-the-Sea v. 7 Similarly, Ground Zero is unpersuasive when it argues that the Navy violated NEPA regulations “by taking action in May 2011 to limit the choice of reasonable alternatives to a new wharf, announcing a decision not to replace all of the aging wharf’s deteriorating piles at one time.” NEPA forbids an agency from taking an action that “[l]imit[s] the choice of reasonable alternatives” before an EIS is issued, 40 C.F.R. § 1506.1(a)(2), as well as “commit[ting] resources prejudicing selection of alternatives before making a final decision,” id. § 1502.2(f). But the expedited repair of EHW-1 in lieu of building EHW-2 was not a reasonable alternative. The Navy’s decisions regarding the time frame for EHW-1’s repair therefore did not violate the NEPA regulations. GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY 25 U.S. Dep’t of Transp., 123 F.3d 1142, 1155 (9th Cir. 1997). But “[a]gencies enjoy ‘considerable discretion’ to define the purpose and need of a project.” Nat’l Parks & Conservation Ass’n v. Bureau of Land Mgmt., 606 F.3d 1058, 1070 (9th Cir. 2010) (quoting Friends of Se.’s Future v. Morrison, 153 F.3d 1059, 1066 (9th Cir. 1998)). The Navy’s operational goal of 400 days per year is not arbitrary, capricious, unreasonably narrow, or otherwise flawed. See City of Carmel-by-the-Sea, 123 F.3d at 1156–57. And the Navy’s considered alternatives were “reasonable in light of the cited project goals.” Id. at 1155. In sum, the Navy violated NEPA’s requirements in some respects, but its errors were harmless with regard to meeting its basic NEPA obligations. III The District Court’s Order Regarding the Record Ground Zero’s other challenge is to what it calls the district court’s “gag order.” The Order, in addition to sealing part of the district court record, prevented Ground Zero from disseminating or further referencing in the litigation documents the Navy inadvertently disclosed. By doing so, Ground Zero contends, the Order violates due process, because it leaves unresolved the question whether Ground Zero may disseminate identical copies of the documents if it obtains those copies from independent sources and so is unconstitutionally vague. And, Ground Zero maintains, the Order also violates the First Amendment as a prior restraint on speech. 26 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY With regard to the due process challenge: Neither the text of the so-called “gag order” nor the district court’s subsequent clarifications squarely state whether Ground Zero may disseminate copies of the sealed documents it obtains from independent sources. The original Order identified a series of documents and provided that none of them “shall be discussed or referenced in any hearing in this matter” or “further disseminated.” Reading that Order in light of the district court’s comments as to its scope and purpose, see, e.g., In re Dual-Deck Video Cassette Recorder Antitrust Litig., 10 F.3d 693, 695 (9th Cir. 1993), we readily construe it as not having the reach Ground Zero fears. At the hearing on Ground Zero’s motion to unseal, the district court stated that it would not “sanction the plaintiffs for possessing or finding [the documents] from Google.” The court also stressed that its intent was to avoid “expand[ing] the reach of these documents by including them in statements, arguments, [or] evidence for purposes of th[e] preliminary injunction.” These comments indicate that the Order did not forbid Ground Zero from disseminating copies of the sealed documents if procured from an independent source. By independent source, we mean what the district court implied: Ground Zero may discuss and distribute the documents in question so long as it acquires the documents from a source not involved in this litigation. See Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 34 (1984) (permitting dissemination of information identical to that subject to a protective order so long as the “information is gained through means independent of the court’s processes”). It may do so even if the independent source originally obtained the documents from Ground Zero, so long as Ground Zero disseminated them before the district court entered the sealing order. Cf. United States v. Caparros, 800 F.2d 23, 27 (2d Cir. 1986) GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY 27 (concluding that from whence a document was “most recently” obtained determined the court’s power to restrict dissemination of it). We so construe the Order, thereby resolving Ground Zero’s vagueness objection. With regard to the First Amendment challenge: The parties identify two relevant lines of cases, neither of which directly addresses the issue raised here. The Navy analogizes the district court’s Order to a protective order shielding pretrial discovery, not publicly disclosed, from subsequent, unilateral public disclosure. Ground Zero invokes cases invalidating prior restraints on speech. The precise issue in this case is whether a litigant who obtains information from public filings later sealed may be prohibited from further dissemination of that information. Whether the First Amendment precludes such a prohibition is a question that falls somewhere between the analogies the parties propose. On the one hand, Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart makes clear that courts have significant discretion to constrain litigants from disseminating information obtained through litigation. Seattle Times upheld a trial court’s protective order prohibiting the Seattle Times, a party to the case, from publishing or disseminating information obtained in discovery. 467 U.S. at 27, 37. In light of Seattle Times, this court, and many others, have applied relaxed First Amendment scrutiny to district courts’ restrictions of litigants’ speech given “the relationship between [them] and the court system.” Levine v. U.S. Dist. Court, 764 F.2d 590, 595–96 (9th Cir. 1985) (listing cases). Like the Seattle 28 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY Times, Ground Zero is a party to the litigation and obtained the disputed documents in the course of litigation.8 The government’s submission of an administrative record to a court for review differs in some important respects, however, from the discovery process in a normal civil trial. Protective orders safeguard the interests of litigants who have no choice but to turn over sensitive information to the other party. See Seattle Times, 467 U.S. at 29–32, 34–36. When privileged information is turned over inadvertently to a party in the course of discovery, applicable privileges generally are not waived. Fed. R. Evid. 502(b). Far from obtaining the right to share the inadvertently produced documents, the party who mistakenly received the information must “promptly return, sequester, or destroy” it once notified it is privileged. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(5)(B). Seattle Times emphasized that restrictions on litigants’ use of discovery documents are permissible because “restraints placed on discovered, but not 8 Applying these precepts, Ground Zero surely would not have had a First Amendment right to disseminate the information at issue had the Navy in the first instance properly submitted it under seal. Nor did the Navy have an independent obligation to publish this information under NEPA. NEPA does not require government agencies publicly to disclose all the information on which they rely in preparing an EIS. See San Luis Obispo Mothers for Peace v. Nuclear Regulatory Comm’n, 635 F.3d 1109, 1116 (9th Cir. 2011) (“SLOMFP”). SLOMFP, for example, addressed a NEPA challenge to a decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and considered whether the Commission should hold closed hearings to discuss sensitive information with the plaintiff organizations. Id. at 1117–18. We held that such hearings were not required, but implied that an agency dealing with sensitive information in the NEPA context could potentially use such hearings, or analogous devices such as sealed filings, to demonstrate its NEPA compliance to interested parties and, potentially, to courts. Id. GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY 29 yet admitted, information are not a restriction on a traditionally public source of information.” 467 U.S. at 33. By contrast, the administrative record filed in a NEPA court case is “a traditionally public source of information.” The Navy knew, or should have known, that the documents it was filing would be made public. Furthermore, it was required to turn over to Ground Zero only documents that would have been available under FOIA to anyone who requested them. See SLOMFP, 635 F.3d at 1115–16. Recognizing its limited responsibility, the Navy requested additional time to submit the administrative record and initially redacted some information from the public docket. In short, the Navy’s publication here was—albeit inadvertently—to the public, not simply to the opposing party and the court. It occurred during litigation, but the Navy had no obligation to submit the portions of the documents now contested. The presuppositions of the Seattle Times line of discovery cases are thus only partly pertinent. But this case also is not entirely parallel to the prior restraint cases involving media organizations. The First Amendment generally protects those who distribute information obtained through public court proceedings. See Okla. Publ’g Co. v. Dist. Court, 430 U.S. 308, 310–11 (1977) (per curiam); Cox Broad. Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 494–95 (1975). That protection attaches in at least some situations where the government inadvertently discloses information to the public. See Fla. Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524, 538 (1989). Here, Ground Zero “lawfully obtain[ed] truthful information about a matter of public significance,” id. at 533 30 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY (citation omitted), and it did so through a channel accessible to any interested member of the public. That channel, the district court’s docket, itself implicates the public’s common law and First Amendment rights of access to documents filed in court proceedings. See San Jose Mercury News, Inc. v. U.S. Dist. Court, 187 F.3d 1096, 1101–02 (9th Cir. 1999) (recognizing under the common law a presumption of public access to judicial records filed in civil cases); Oregonian Publ’g Co. v. U.S. Dist. Court, 920 F.2d 1462, 1465 (9th Cir. 1990) (recognizing that a qualified First Amendment right of access applies to “court proceedings and documents”). Further, New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 714 (1971) (per curiam), indicates that national security interests, such as those the Navy asserts here, are generally insufficient to overcome the First Amendment’s “heavy presumption” against the constitutionality of prior restraints, even against those who disseminate information obtained illegally—which is not, of course, what occurred here. In short, because the district court’s Order targets information the Navy released not just to Ground Zero but also to the public, it implicates Ground Zero’s First Amendment rights differently than would a properly implemented protective order concerning ordinary pretrial civil discovery, like the one considered in Seattle Times. Yet, the Order’s reach also differs significantly from the prohibitions considered in the prior restraint cases. In the prior restraint cases, media organizations were exposed to liability for publishing information regardless of how it was obtained. See Cox Broad. Corp., 420 U.S. at 471–72; Okla. Publ’g Co., 430 U.S. at 308; N.Y. Times Co., 403 U.S. at 714. Here, Ground Zero may disseminate the documents at issue so long as it obtains them from an independent source. The Order therefore prohibits dissemination only of those GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY 31 documents filed in error that Ground Zero acquired exclusively through this litigation and that it had not already disseminated when the Order was issued. Because neither of the lines of cases the parties put forward is quite on point here, we chart a middle course. We conclude that, because the Navy filed the contested documents on the public docket, to impose a restriction on Ground Zero’s further public disclosure of them, the Navy must meet a stricter standard than the showing of good cause necessary to obtain a protective order in the typical discovery context. Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(c). Our caselaw on protective orders regarding discovery materials provides a baseline. A party seeking an ordinary protective order under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26(c) must show that “specific prejudice or harm will result if no protective order is granted.” Phillips ex rel. Estates of Byrd v. Gen. Motors Corp., 307 F.3d 1206, 1210–11 (9th Cir. 2002). If the party makes this showing, the court must then determine if an order is necessary by “balanc[ing] the public and private interests ” at stake. Id. at 1211. Even if we were to find the district court’s Order precisely analogous to a protective order—and we ultimately do not—the district court should have engaged in this two-step analysis. It is not clear that it did. Because the Order in this case raises more serious First Amendment concerns than would a typical protective order affecting only discovery materials, however, we require a showing of more than good cause to justify it, as courts have done in other cases raising similar First Amendment questions. For instance, once information subject to a protective order is made available to the public in the course 32 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY of a trial, the party seeking to limit public access must meet a higher threshold to justify re-sealing that information. See Poliquin v. Garden Way, Inc., 989 F.2d 527, 533 (1st Cir. 1993) (holding that “the ordinary showing of good cause which is adequate to protect discovery material from disclosure cannot alone justify protecting such material after it has been introduced at trial,” and concluding that “only the most compelling showing can justify” continued secrecy); see also In re Violation of Rule 28(D), 635 F.3d 1352, 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2011) (quoting Poliquin within approval). We also require parties to show “compelling reasons” to justify sealing documents attached to dispositive motions and other filings that relate to the merits of a case, even when those documents were produced pursuant to a sealing order. Kamakana v. City & Cty. of Honolulu, 447 F.3d 1172, 1180 (9th Cir. 2006) (holding that “[t]hose who seek to maintain the secrecy of documents attached to dispositive motions must meet the high threshold of showing that compelling reasons support secrecy” (internal quotation marks omitted)); see also Ctr. for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Grp., LLC, 809 F.3d 1092, 1101 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 137 S. Ct. 38 (2016) (applying the same standard to documents attached to motions “more than tangentially related to the merits of a case”). This higher standard is warranted because, “[u]nlike private materials unearthed during discovery, judicial records are public documents almost by definition, and the public is entitled to access by default,” a fact that “sharply tips the balance in favor of production when a document, formerly sealed for good cause under Rule 26(c), becomes part of a judicial record.” Kamakana, 447 F.3d at 1180; cf. Oregonian Publ’g Co., 920 F.2d at 1466 (stating that, where the First Amendment right of access applies, public access can be restricted only where specific factual findings show that GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY 33 “(1) closure serves a compelling interest; (2) there is a substantial probability that, in the absence of closure, this compelling interest would be harmed; and (3) there are no alternatives to closure that would adequately protect the compelling interest”). Although we read Ground Zero’s briefs as challenging the restrictions on its dissemination of the materials filed, rather than the district court’s sealing decision as such, caselaw analyzing when it is appropriate to seal presumptively public court records is nevertheless instructive. The district court imposed its restrictions on Ground Zero’s speech as part of an order that not only withdrew the erroneously filed documents from the public judicial record but also sealed two of Ground Zero’s briefs relating to its motion for a preliminary injunction.9 We have in the past applied the “compelling reasons” standard in evaluating whether to seal documents attached to preliminary injunction briefing where the issues discussed were more than tangentially related to the merits of a case. See Ctr. for Auto Safety, 809 F.3d at 1102. Relying on these precedents, we hold that, to impose continuing restrictions on Ground Zero’s public dissemination of documents that the Navy inadvertently made public, a court must identify “a compelling reason [to impose the restriction] and articulate the factual basis for its ruling, without relying on hypothesis or conjecture.” Kamakana, 447 F.3d at 1179 (quoting Hagestad v. Tragesser, 49 F.3d 1430, 1434 (9th Cir. 1995)). We adopt this rigorous standard from a related context to reflect the First Amendment 9 The government later agreed that one of these briefs could be unsealed in its entirety (although it appears still to be sealed on the electronic docket), and that the other could be filed with redactions. 34 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY interests implicated when the Navy posted the documents on the public docket. We decline to accept the analogy to classic prior restraints, which are almost never acceptable, see N.Y. Times Co., 403 U.S. at 714, because Ground Zero remains a litigant whose use of documents acquired through litigation is properly subject to some degree of control by the district court. National security concerns can, of course, provide a compelling reason for shrouding in secrecy even documents once in the public domain. See Al-Haramain Islamic Found., Inc. v. Bush, 507 F.3d 1190, 1193 (9th Cir. 2007) (permitting the government to seal a Top Secret classified document pursuant to the common law state secrets privilege, despite its prior dissemination to the public); but see Barre v. Obama, 932 F. Supp. 2d 5, 8–9 (D.D.C. 2013) (distinguishing AlHaramain in a case in which the government inadvertently posted information on the public docket and made no effort to remove it). Still, what we have here are not Top Secret—or even classified—documents.10 To determine whether national security concerns justify continuing restrictions on Ground Zero’s public speech here, more analysis is needed than occurred in the district court. Although the district court considered declarations the Navy submitted in opposition to Ground Zero’s motion to unseal, it did not make specific findings, either in its initial sealing order,or during its ruling on Ground Zero’s motion to unseal, as to why Ground Zero may properly be prohibited from further disseminating the documents at issue. It is not 10 With respect to the administrative record, there are two types of controlled unclassified information at issue: UCNI and “critical infrastructure security information.” See 10 U.S.C. § 130e(c). GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY 35 enough that the documents could have been protected from disclosure in the first instance, or that the documents “implicate national security” (emphasis added), in some vague sense. Any restriction of Ground Zero’s public speech at this point must be justified by specific facts showing that disclosure of particular documents would harm national security. Relevant to this assessment will be the fact that the documents are not classified, and the extent to which the information they contain already has been publicly disclosed. The district court’s restrictions on Ground Zero’s ability to use the inadvertently released information in this litigation are not subject to the same constitutional scrutiny, however. The district court permitted Ground Zero to retain its copies of the inadvertently filed documents for purposes of appealing the First Amendment issue, but did not permit Ground Zero to cite the disputed documents “during summary judgment or trial” regarding its NEPA claims. In doing so, the district court in essence required Ground Zero, in making its NEPA arguments, to rely only on what the court considered the proper public administrative record. See, e.g., Animal Def. Council v. Hodel, 840 F.2d 1432, 1438 (9th Cir. 1988), amended, 867 F.2d 1244 (9th Cir. 1989) (order) (holding, in a NEPA case, that “the district court properly limited review to the administrative record”). In ruling on the parties’ motions for summary judgment, for instance, the court noted that “[i]nadvertent disclosure for purposes of litigating these motions does not demonstrate the Navy was improper in its earlier withholding” during the environmental review process. Our caselaw interpreting NEPA’s public disclosure requirement indicates that the parties and the court are to consider only information required to be disclosed under 36 GROUND ZERO CENTER V. U.S. DEP’T OF THE NAVY FOIA. See SLOMFP, 635 F.3d at 1116. Ground Zero does not now argue that the information redacted in the replacement administrative record was improperly designated UCNI or that, absent the government’s mistake, Ground Zero would have been entitled to it as part of the public administrative record. As there has been no relevant challenge, we express no view on the merits of the district court’s conclusion regarding the scope of the administrative record relevant to the NEPA inquiry. We do note that, on remand, the court retains its ordinary authority to determine the content of the administrative record properly before it with regard to the issues presented, in accordance with the relevant statutes and the Federal Rules of Evidence and Procedure. See, e.g., United States v. W.R. Grace, 526 F.3d 499, 508–09 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc) (explaining the district court’s inherent “authority to enter pretrial case management and discovery orders designed to ensure that the relevant issues to be tried are identified”); Animal Def. Council, 840 F.2d at 1438 (concluding that the district court properly limited review to the administrative record and refused to permit discovery); cf. Al-Haramain, 507 F.3d at 1204–05 (concluding that, where a document was subject to the state secrets privilege, the court was required to treat the previously disclosed evidence as unavailable). Accordingly, we vacate the district court’s November 9, 2012 and July 29, 2013 orders pertaining to Ground Zero’s use of the disputed documents and remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.