Opinion ID: 221342
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of the Experience and Logic Test

Text: The NYCTA would have us forgo the Richmond Newspapers test: it argues that administrative proceedings are never subject to a presumption of public access and that Richmond Newspapers and its progeny apply only to courts. The NYCTA argues that, since administrative proceedings were rare, if not nonexistent, in the early Republic, they are totally different from either criminal or civil trials, which enjoyed centuries of open access, dating back before the Founding. The First Amendment, the NYCTA claims, could not possibly guarantee a right to access something that barely existed at the time of the Founding. Instead, the NYCTA suggests, the issue of public access to administrative proceedings is one for the legislature or the administrative agency itself to decide, free from judicial supervision. This argument fails for several reasons. The Supreme Court has not specified how courts should determine whether the experience and logic test applies to administrative proceedings. But we have good reason to think that this determination does not involve asking whether the proceedings in question have a history of openness dating back to the Founding. As the Sixth Circuit has stated, the Supreme Court effectively silenced this argument in Press-Enterprise II, where the Court relied on exclusively post-Bill of Rights history in determining that preliminary hearings in criminal cases were historically open. Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft, 303 F.3d 681, 700 (6th Cir.2002) (citing Press-Enterprise II, 478 U.S. at 10-12, 106 S.Ct. 2735). More importantly, the NYCTA's claim is refuted by the reasoning of the public access cases themselves. These focus not on formalistic descriptions of the government proceeding but on the kind of work the proceeding actually does and on the First Amendment principles at stake. [T]he First Amendment question cannot be resolved solely on the label we give the event, i.e., `trial' or otherwise, particularly where the [proceeding] functions much like a full-scale trial. Press-Enterprise II, 478 U.S. at 7, 106 S.Ct. 2735. In extending the right of public access from the criminal trial to its components and on to civil trials, the Supreme Court and the circuits have emphasized the importance of access to public participation and to government accountability  values, the courts have emphasized, that are central to democracy. [T]he First Amendment ... has a structural role to play in securing and fostering our republican system of self-government, Richmond Newspapers, 448 U.S. at 587, 100 S.Ct. 2814 (Brennan, J., concurring). And public access serves to ensure that the individual citizen can effectively participate in and contribute to self-government. Globe Newspaper, 457 U.S. at 604, 102 S.Ct. 2613. There is little cause to think that this reasoning has significantly less force in the administrative context. And this is especially so when the administrative process at issue so closely resembles that of the courts. See Detroit Free Press, 303 F.3d at 710 (A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the Framers of our Constitution.). Of course, widespread administrative adjudication is a relatively new phenomenon. Fed. Mar. Comm'n v. S.C. State Ports Auth., 535 U.S. 743, 755, 122 S.Ct. 1864, 152 L.Ed.2d 962 (2002) (noting that formalized administrative adjudications were all but unheard of in the late 18th century and early 19th century). But changes in the organization of government do not exempt new institutions from the purview of old rules. Rather, they lead us to ask how the new institutions fit into existing legal structures. If, as the NYCTA suggests, government institutions that did not exist at the time of the Framers were insulated from the principles of accountability and public participation that the Framers inscribed in the First Amendment, legislatures could easily avoid constitutional strictures by moving an old governmental function to a new institutional location. Immunizing government proceedings from public scrutiny by placing them in institutions the Framers could not have imagined, as the NYCTA urges, would make avoidance of constitutional protections all too easy. Two other circuits have considered a similar question, and they have likewise concluded that  Richmond Newspapers is a test broadly applicable to issues of access to government proceedings, North Jersey Media Group, Inc. v. Ashcroft, 308 F.3d 198, 208-09 (3d Cir.2002), and especially to quasi-judicial administrative proceedings, because there is a limited First Amendment right of access to certain aspects of the executive and legislative branches, Detroit Free Press, 303 F.3d at 695. As a result, these circuits have each applied the experience and logic test in the administrative context. See id. at 705 (holding that the experience and logic test applies to removal proceedings and that the public has a qualified right of access to those proceedings); North Jersey Media Group, 308 F.3d 198 (holding that the experience and logic test applies to removal proceedings and that the public lacks a qualified right of access to those proceedings). The fact that, in applying this test, the circuits differed on how the test played out in no way counters their holdings, with which we agree, that the test applies to administrative trials. Similarly, albeit in a different line of cases, the Supreme Court has recognized that the adjudicatory work of administrative agencies can be sufficiently like that of the courts to warrant requiring the agencies to follow principles that apply to courts. For instance, Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 98 S.Ct. 2894, 57 L.Ed.2d 895 (1978), which extended the absolute immunity enjoyed by Article III judges to administrative law judges, noted that judicial immunity stems from the characteristics of the judicial process rather than its location within one or another branch of government. Id. at 512, 98 S.Ct. 2894. And, the Court determined, adjudication within a federal administrative agency shares enough of the characteristics of the judicial process to render the work of the modern federal hearing examiner or administrative law judge within this framework... functionally comparable to that of a judge. Id. at 512-13, 98 S.Ct. 2894 (internal quotation marks omitted). More recently, Federal Maritime Commission v. South Carolina State Ports Authority concluded that states retained the sovereign immunity they enjoyed in court when they were subject to an administrative adjudicatory proceeding that `walks, talks, and squawks very much like a lawsuit.' Fed. Mar. Comm'n, 535 U.S. at 757, 122 S.Ct. 1864 (quoting South Carolina State Ports Authority v. Fed. Mar. Comm'n, 243 F.3d 165, 174 (4th Cir.2001)). Such cases recognize that the principles governing adjudication do not lose validity when the adjudication moves to another branch of government. Indeed, as the Supreme Court has stated, when governmental agencies adjudicate or make binding determinations which directly affect the legal rights of individuals, it is imperative that those agencies use the procedures which have traditionally been associated with the judicial process. Hannah v. Larche, 363 U.S. 420, 442, 80 S.Ct. 1502, 4 L.Ed.2d 1307 (1960). In the present case, the TAB acts as an adjudicatory body, operates under procedures modeled on those of the courts, and impose[s] official and practical consequences upon members of society. Richmond Newspapers, 448 U.S. at 595, 100 S.Ct. 2814 (Brennan, J., concurring). When a neutral adjudicator determines whether public transit users have violated a Rule, that determination has the force of law and, like the criminal trial for which it substitutes, it is a genuine governmental proceeding. Id. at 596, 100 S.Ct. 2814. The TAB and the court serve similar functions, in similar ways, and have a similar effect on the parties before them. In so holding, we need not, and should not, make any broad pronouncement about the right of access to administrative processes generally. Given the wide variety of proceedings that characterize the administrative state, that would be as foolhardy as it is unnecessary. But we have no trouble concluding that the First Amendment guarantees a presumptive right of access at least to this administrative forum. We therefore proceed to examine the experience and logic of open access to the TAB's proceedings. [10]