Opinion ID: 3011956
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Applicability of Richmond Newspapers to

Text: Administrative Proceedings The Government contends that while Richmond Newspapers properly applies to civil and criminal proceedings under Article III, the Constitution’s text militates against extending First Amendment rights to nonArticle III proceedings such as deportation. Its premise is one of expressio unius est exclusio alterius: Article III is silent on the question of public access to judicial trials, but _________________________________________________________________ 3. Although the Supreme Court has not addressed the right to attend civil trials, each Court of Appeals to examine this question has concluded that Richmond Newspapers applies and that a First Amendment right exists. See, e.g., Westmoreland v. CBS, 752 F.2d 16, 23 (2d Cir. 1984); Rushford v. New Yorker Magazine, 846 F.2d 249 (4th Cir. 1988); Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. v. Federal Trade Commission, 710 F.2d 1165 (6th Cir. 1983); In re Continental Illinois Securities Litigation, 732 F.2d 1302 (7th Cir. 1984); Newman v. Graddick, 696 F.2d 796 (11th Cir. 1983). 15 the Sixth Amendment expressly incorporates the common law tradition of public trials, thus supporting the notion that the First Amendment likewise incorporates that tradition for Article III purposes. (Gov’t Brief at 21-22.) Articles I and II, conversely, do address the question of access, and they do not provide for Executive or Legislative proceedings to be open to the public.4 To the Government, the absence of an explicit guarantee of access for Article I and II proceedings (as exists in Article III) gives rise to a distinction with a difference because, without an incorporating provision parallel to the Sixth Amendment, the Framers must have intended to deny the public access to political proceedings. The Government’s suggestion is ultimately that we should not apply Richmond Newspapers where the Constitution’s structure dictates that no First Amendment right applies, and should instead let the political branches (here, the Executive, acting through the Justice Department) determine the proper degree of access to administrative proceedings. See Capital Cities Media, Inc. v. Chester, 797 F.2d 1164, 1168 (3d Cir. 1986) (in banc) (concluding that aside from limited requirements, the Constitution leaves to the democratic process the regulation of public access to the political branches). Our own jurisprudence precludes this approach. In Publicker, for example, we found a First Amendment right to attend civil trials, proceedings to which the Sixth Amendment is entirely inapplicable. If an express provision were necessary to incorporate into the Bill of Rights the common law tradition of access to trials, Publicker would have come out the other way, a result the Government does not urge. Moreover, the Richmond Newspapers Court itself apparently did not view the Sixth Amendment as a critical _________________________________________________________________ 4. The only constitutionalized access requirement vis-a-vis the Executive is that the President from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union. (U.S. Const. Art. II,S 3.) The Constitution also requires Congress to publish a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money, (U.S. Const. art. I, S 9, cl. 7), and instructs each House of Congress to publish a journal of proceedings from which it may withhold such Parts as it may in [its] Judgment require Secrecy. (U.S. Const. art. I,S 5, cl. 3). 16 incorporating provision. That case’s incorporation language states only that [t]he Bill of Rights was enacted against the backdrop of the long history of trials being presumptively open. Richmond Newspapers, 448 U.S. at 575. There is no suggestion that the Sixth Amendment is crucial to the right of access; indeed, this passage merely states that the Framers assumed a common and established practice. At all events, after Publicker, the Sixth Amendment cannot be the sole source of a First Amendment right of access, and our precedents likewise foreclose the Government’s attempt to confine the Richmond Newspapers approach to the Article III context. In Capital Cities Media, 797 F.2d at 1164, we held that there was no First Amendment right of public access to the records of a state environmental agency, an administrative body. Although the Government makes much of our no-access conclusion, more important is our methodology, for we found no First Amendment right only after applying the Richmond Newspapers test. Reviewing the Supreme Court’s relevant holdings, we summarized that [t]he government may not close government proceedings which historically have been open unless public access contributes nothing of significant value to that process or there is a compelling state interest in closure and a carefully tailored resolution of the conflict between that interest and First Amendment concerns. Id. at 1173. Similarly, in First Amendment Coalition v. Judicial Inquiry & Review Board, 784 F.2d 467 (3d Cir. 1986), we examined a Pennsylvania law permitting access to records of the Judicial Inquiry and Review Board only if that Board recommended disciplinary measures against a judge in a particular case. Plaintiff, a free speech advocacy group, sought access to records of cases in which the Board did not recommend a punishment. We again applied Richmond Newspapers, though we found that [t]hese administrative proceedings, unlike conventional criminal and civil trials, do not have a long history of openness, id. at 472, and therefore upheld the state law against plaintiff ’s First Amendment right-of-access claim.5 Most recently, in _________________________________________________________________ 5. The Government submits that First Amendment Coalition actually stands for the opposite proposition: that we should not apply Richmond 17 Whiteland Woods, 193 F.3d at 177, we applied the Richmond Newspapers analysis to determine whether a citizen had a First Amendment right to videotape a Township Planning Commission meeting. As in Capital Cities Media and First Amendment Coalition , we denied the right but only after going through the two-step analysis. These precedents demonstrate that in this Court, Richmond Newspapers is a test broadly applicable to issues of access to government proceedings, including removal. In this one respect we note our agreement with the Sixth Circuit’s conclusion in their nearly identical case. See Detroit Free Press v. Ashcroft, 2002 U.S. App. LEXIS 17646 (6th Cir. 2002). We now employ that test to determine whether the press and public have a First Amendment right to attend deportation hearings.