Opinion ID: 2231508
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Balancing the Association Right Against the State's Interest in Disclosure.

Text: If a party makes a successful prima facie showing, the district court must balance the party's association right against the state's interest in disclosing the information. Balancing tests are often utilized to protect a party's First Amendment association right. See, e.g., Black Panther Party, 661 F.2d at 1266 ([T]he plaintiff's First Amendment claim should be measured against the defendant's need for the information sought.); U.S. Dep't of Agric., 239 F.Supp.2d at 1241. The state must demonstrate a compelling governmental interest in order to justify chilling a party's association right through disclosing information to the public. Patterson, 357 U.S. at 463, 78 S.Ct. 1163; Brock, 860 F.2d at 350; U.S. Dep't of Agric., 239 F.Supp.2d at 1241. In conducting the balancing analysis, the district court should consider both the competing interests of the parties and the stage of litigation at which public disclosure is sought. [10] The factors used by the district court in determining the competing interests of the parties will vary in each case. For the party asserting a chill on its association right, once it has established a prima facie showing of potential harm in the first step of the analysis, the strength of that harm is relevant in the second step of the balancing test. The argument against disclosure will ordinarily grow stronger as the danger to rights of    association increases. Black Panther Party, 661 F.2d at 1267. The district court should also consider that discovery is intended primarily to assist in preparation for trial or settlement, not necessarily for public education. See Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 34, 104 S.Ct. 2199, 81 L.Ed.2d 17 (1984). We also note that in most of the cases where courts have protected association rights, it is the identity of members with which the court was concerned and not necessarily the content of documents, for which protection is sought in this case. The district court should consider whether parties are sufficiently protected by having their identities redacted in documents that could otherwise be made public, rather than withholding documents in their entirety. The party's association right is then weighed against the state's interest in disclosing the information to the public. For example, we noted that in order to make effective the attorney general's statutory duty to enforce antitrust laws, such enforcement usually must be done publicly, for educational purposes and to deter similar conduct by others. GSK I, 699 N.W.2d at 755. In assessing the competing interests of the parties and disclosure, the district court should consider the stage in litigation at which public disclosure is sought. In Seattle Times, the Supreme Court noted that [m]uch of the information that surfaces during pretrial discovery may be unrelated, or only tangentially related, to the underlying cause of action. Therefore, restraints placed on discovered, but not yet admitted, information are not a restriction on a traditionally public source of information. 467 U.S. at 33, 104 S.Ct. 2199. We agree that materials and information generated during pretrial discovery are often not appropriate for public disclosure. A contrary rule would undermine our liberal discovery policies by encouraging parties to challenge discovery requests that are broader than may be absolutely necessary for litigation. See Minn R. Civ. P. 26.02(a) (stating that parties may obtain discovery for any matter relevant to a claim or defense and defining relevant as anything reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence). Therefore, the district court should evaluate the state's asserted compelling governmental interest in releasing pretrial discovery materials that may chill a party's association right with the policy underlying discovery in mind. [11] But later in litigation, the privacy interest surrounding pretrial discovery is more likely to yield to the common law presumption of access. See Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co., 392 N.W.2d at 202. As noted above, the Minnesota Rules of Public Access to Records of the Judicial Branch govern judicial records and clarify the common law right of public access in Minnesota. Once the court receives or collects records from parties, the broad rule of public access attaches. See Minn. R. Pub. Access to Recs. of Jud. Branch 3, subd. 5; 4, subd. 1 We note that the district court ruled that the disputed documents were correctly designated as petitioning documents subject to First Amendment privilege and for that reason, among others, would remain confidential. GSK's First Amendment argument in this court is focused primarily on the freedom of association, with only occasional reference to petitioning rights. Although, as noted above, the right to petition the government for redress of grievances is one of the express First Amendment rights from which the right to association derives, the court of appeals correctly observed there is no firm body of law establishing a petitioning privilege that provides absolute protection for petitioning documents from either discovery or public disclosure. GSK II, 713 N.W.2d at 56. GSK cites no such authority and, in fact, does not appear to argue for such absolute protection. The court of appeals correctly explained that federal courts have rejected the notion that the Noerr-Pennington doctrine [12] establishes a privilege against discovery of petitioning documents. 713 N.W.2d at 56. GSK apparently does not disagree. The court of appeals further stated that Noerr-Pennington would not prevent the disclosure of GSK's documents without a showing that the standard for protection of associational activity is met. 713 N.W.2d at 56. GSK does not appear to contend otherwise. Rather, GSK relies on the Noerr-Pennington doctrine only for the propositions that GSK may express its views on legislation and that its petitioning conduct is not illegal under federal or state antitrust law and is therefore not excluded from First Amendment protection. But as far as we can understand, GSK does not make any argument or cite any authority establishing that documents involved in petitioning activity are entitled to a different level of protection or analysis than is provided under the rubric of GSK's right to association argument. Accordingly, GSK presents no basis for a separate analysis based on a petitioning privilege, and we decline to engage in a separate analysis. We reverse the court of appeals' holding that the district court abused its discretion in prohibiting public access to the documents based on GSK and PhRMA's asserted First Amendment rights. We remand to the district court so that it may, consistent with this opinion, determine whether GSK and PhRMA's documents are entitled to a protective order based on First Amendment association rights, as asserted by GSK and PhRMA. [13] Based on the unusual procedural history of this case, with the Hennepin County District Court overseeing the civil investigation and the Ramsey County District Court as the venue in which the state's complaint was filed, we exercise our supervisory authority by remanding both the Hennepin and Ramsey County proceedings exclusively to the Ramsey County District Court, because that is the venue that is home for the underlying litigation. That court already has authority over the documents filed with the complaint, and, if the state so requests, it may also review the remaining disputed documents that were not attached to the complaint. The current record is sufficient for the district court to make its determinations.