Opinion ID: 1041672
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: IAU Report

Text: In concluding that the IAU Report should remain sealed, the district court relied on the magistrate judge’s prior finding of good cause in connection with defendants’ motion for a Rule 26 protective order. However, the facts necessary to show good cause for a protective order applicable to discovery documents that are not yet implicated in judicial proceedings will not necessarily meet the higher threshold imposed by the First Amendment with respect to judicial documents. See In re Midland Nat’l Life Ins. Co., 686 F.3d 1115, 1120 (9th Cir. 2012); Union Oil Co. of Cal. v. Leavell, 220 F.3d 562, 568 (7th Cir. 2000); Rushford v. New Yorker Magazine, Inc., 846 F.2d 249, 252‐53 (4th Cir. 1988) (“[D]iscovery [subject to a protective order] stands on a wholly different footing than does a motion filed by a party seeking action by the court.”). The district court therefore erred by relying solely on the prior finding of good cause to determine that the First 13 Intervenors also argue that the district court failed to docket various submissions made by the PBA or the defendants. To the extent the district court has failed to docket certain filings, we direct it to do so. Of course, the district court is free, after making the requisite findings, to place all or part of such filings under seal, if such sealing is justified under the standards set forth in this opinion. 23 Amendment right did not apply or was outweighed by countervailing factors. It does not follow, however, that the Report must be made public. We must conduct an independent review of the Report to determine (a) whether it is a judicial document to which the First Amendment right applies, and, if so, (b) whether the right of access is defeated in this case. In independently reviewing the record, we determine the degree of judicial reliance on the document in question and the relevance of the document’s specific contents to the nature of the proceeding. Here, of course, the entire contempt proceeding was, in some sense, about the Report. But this in itself is not sufficient to find the Report a judicial document. The mere fact that a dispute exists about whether a document should be sealed or disclosed, or that a party seeks to sanction another party for disclosing portions of a sealed document, cannot ipso facto create a presumption of access. As the district court recognized, such a rule would bootstrap materials that are not closely related to judicial proceedings into judicial documents. We focus rather on the use that was made, and that the parties could reasonably have been expected to make, of the Report in connection with the contempt proceeding, in order to determine whether access to the Report would 24 materially assist the public in understanding the issues before the district court, and in evaluating the fairness and integrity of the court’s proceedings. Our examination of the record leads inexorably to the conclusion that the substance of the full Report was not significantly relied upon or at issue in the contempt proceeding. Significantly, the Report did not need to be, and was not, entered into evidence, nor did the court rely on any portion of the Report that was not testified about in open court. Indeed, Judge Spatt declined the proposal that he read the full Report. Schmitt was charged with disclosing certain limited information contained in the Report, and the issue before the court was whether the information he disclosed was indeed derived from the Report. Thus, the only contents of the Report relevant to the contempt hearing were those that Schmitt revealed during the television interview. It would be absurd to conclude that in order to determine whether someone violated the court’s order by disclosing one or two details from a lengthy, sensitive document, a court must place into the public record the entire document including other confidential material that had not been disclosed and that was not at issue in the contempt proceeding.14 14 In reaching this conclusion, we recognize that the key fact disclosed by Schmitt – that approximately twenty‐two officers were mentioned and implicitly criticized in the Report – constituted a summary of a number of specific 25 The Report was utilized during the hearing only as a reference for Delargy to refresh his recollection during his testimony. That use, intervenors argue, raises it to the level of a judicial document. We disagree. As the police officer most directly responsible for its preparation, Delargy testified as a witness with personal knowledge of the Report. Only his testimony, and not the material used to refresh his recollection, could be relied on by the court in deciding the contempt application. Delargy’s use of a copy of the Report during his testimony was therefore analogous to a police officer’s review of his notes prior to testifying at a criminal trial. Such use does not make such notes evidence that is part of the trial record, nor does it render the Report a judicial document for First Amendment purposes.15 statements from the Report rather than a quotation of a discrete sentence within it, and that Delargy reviewed the entire Report in order to verify the number. The point remains that Schmitt’s disclosure, and Delargy’s corresponding testimony, disclosed only that general fact, and that additional details of the Report were not disclosed by Schmitt, testified to by Delargy, nor relevant to the contempt proceeding. 15 We respectfully disagree with the approach to this issue taken in Judge Lohierʹs concurring opinion. Finding that a document is a ʺjudicial documentʺ triggers a presumption of public access, and requires a court to make specific, rigorous findings before sealing the document or otherwise denying public access. It is not, and should not be, an easy matter to deny the public access to documents that are utilized in judicial proceedings and form part of the basis of 26 We conclude that the Report, as it was used or as it could be expected to be used in the contempt hearing, is not the type of judicial document to which the judicial decision‐making, since the public is ordinarily entitled to review such material in order to understand and evaluate the actions of the courts. For that reason, the category of “judicial documents” should not be readily expanded. The fact that a document is relevant to the subject matter of a judicial proceeding, or that the proceeding was in some way stimulated by the document, does not make it public. Unlike Judge Lohier, we conclude that the fact that the district court avoided “‘relying’ on the Report by not reading it” (Concurring opinion, post, at 2), where the Report was never put into evidence, underscores why the Report is not a judicial document. Parties are entitled to litigate issues that divide them, if they can fairly do so, without thereby exposing to public view confidential materials. A party may wish, for purposes of advancing its litigation position, to introduce a confidential document into evidence, attach it to a brief or other submission, or take a position that entitles its adversary to put that document into evidence. In those circumstances, the party is faced with the hard choice of either foregoing reliance on the document or submitting the document and seeking a court order placing the document under seal or closing the related proceedings. Choosing the latter path unavoidably entails risking the possibility that the court may find that the strict standards for sealing judicial documents or closing proceedings have not been met. But when a party chooses not to rely on documents or other confidential information in court, the fact that the information is sufficiently relevant to the proceedings that it could have been introduced into evidence does not entitle the press or public to demand access to it or to put courts to the burden of evaluating whether the strict standards for rebutting the presumption of public access have been met. It makes no difference in this regard whether the party initially devised such a strategy or adopted it at the suggestion of the district court; the choice remains that of the litigant. Finally, the fact that the Report “was already part of the record in connection with obtaining the protective order” (Concurring opinion, post, at 1), cannot change the analysis. A document cannot become subject to a presumption of public access by reason of the parties’ efforts to keep it confidential during the discovery process. 27 First Amendment right attaches. There is thus no presumption of public access to the Report, and the district court was well within its discretion in declining to unseal it.