United States v. Erie Cnty.

• Decision Date: 18 August 2014
• Docket Number: Docket No. 13–3653–cv.
• Citation: 763 F.3d 235
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, Defendant–Appellee, v. New York Civil Liberties Union (N.Y.CLU), Intervenor–Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit

763 F.3d 235

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.ERIE COUNTY, NEW YORK, Defendant–Appellee,

v.New York Civil Liberties Union (N.Y.CLU), Intervenor–Appellant.

Docket No. 13–3653–cv.

United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit.

Argued: June 18, 2014.

Decided: Aug. 18, 2014.

Erin Aslan (Mark L. Gross, on the brief), for Jocelyn Samuels, Acting Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., for Plaintiff–Appellee.

Michelle M. Parker, for Michael A. Siragusa, Erie County Attorney, Buffalo, NY, for Defendant–Appellee.

Alexis Karterton (Arthur Eisenberg, Jordan Wells, Christopher Dunn, on the brief), New York Civil Liberties Union, New York, NY, for Intervenor–Appellant.

Before: CALABRESI, PARKER, and LYNCH, Circuit Judges.

CALABRESI, Circuit Judge:

This case is about public access to judicial documents.¹ The documents in this case are compliance reports, filed with the district court pursuant to a settlement agreement between the United States and Erie County. The reports measure Erie County's progress in improving the conditions of its prisons, which the United States alleged violated the Fourteenth and Eighth Amendments of the Constitution in the suit that led to the settlement agreement. If the reports show that Erie County is failing to fulfill the conditions outlined in the settlement's stipulated order of dismissal, the United States is empowered to bring an enforcement proceeding, and the district court can provide “any relief permitted by law or equity.” Joint App'x at 219.

Today, we hold that the public's fundamental right of access to judicial documents, guaranteed by the First Amendment, was wrongly denied when the compliance reports in this case were sealed. Accordingly, we reverse the district court's decision, and order that the judicial documents be unsealed.

I.

Following a two-year investigation into the conditions of confinement at two Erie County correctional facilities, the United States brought an action in the Western District of New York against Erie County and several of its officials. ² The action, filed in September of 2009, alleged that the conditions at the Erie County facilities violated the federal constitutional rights of the inmates housed there by failing (a) to protect them from harm, (b) to provide adequate mental health care or medical care, and (c) to engage in adequate suicide prevention.

In June of 2010, the District Court approved a partial settlement between the parties, which would resolve only the claims relating to suicide prevention. Pursuant to this agreement, the parties appointed a compliance officer, who would file with the Court reports measuring the extent to which Erie County was taking steps to prevent suicides.

The United States' other claims against Erie County remained. When Erie County moved to dismiss these claims, the District Court denied the motion but ordered the United States to file an amended complaint. The United States did so, alleging Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment violations for, inter alia, medical indifference, substandard mental health and medical care, and environmental health and safety failings.

In August of 2011, the United States and Erie County proposed a settlement agreement to resolve these remaining claims. Under the agreement, the claims against the individual defendant-officials were dismissed, and while Erie County did not admit wrongdoing, it did agree to implement practices and procedures to remediate what the United States had contended were unconstitutional conditions of confinement.

To ensure that the terms of the order were fulfilled, the settlement provided for the appointment of two compliance consultants. One would monitor mental health issues, and the other would oversee medical issues.³ Every six months, the compliance consultants were to produce written reports—which are the focus of this litigation—outlining Erie County's progress, or lack thereof, in remedying the issues that led to the suit and settlement. The reports were first to be given to the parties, who could provide comment, and were then to be filed with the District Court. The compliance consultants would report to the Court whether Erie County was in substantial compliance, partial compliance, or non-compliance with the settlement agreement.

In an order entered later that August, the District Court agreed that the parties' proposed stipulated settlement order satisfied the requirements for prospective relief under the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3626(a)(1)(A), inasmuch as it was narrowly drawn and employed the least intrusive means to correct the alleged violations of the federal rights at issue. The Court therefore approved the stipulated order dismissing the government's suit, but it also retained jurisdiction over the matter until the terms of the settlement were fulfilled.

Importantly, the settlement agreement allows either party to move to reopen the case at any time “should issues requiring [the] Court's intervention arise.” Under such circumstances, the compliance reports would form the record for any appropriate enforcement action before the District Court. Should, for example, Erie County fail to abide by the settlement, the agreement provides that the Court is fully empowered to order “any relief permitted by law or equity.” Significantly, the agreement does not purport to preclude the District Court from providing such relief sua sponte if, on the basis of the reports, it finds non-compliance.

After the first compliance report was produced, Erie County moved that the order be filed under seal. The United States did not oppose the motion, and the District Court granted it. The Court also permitted future sealing of the reports.

In June of 2012, the New York Civil Liberties Union (“NYCLU”) moved to intervene and to unseal the compliance reports.⁴ The District Court granted NYCLU's motion to intervene, but denied its motion to unseal the reports. United States v. Erie County, N.Y., No. 09–cv–849S, 2013 WL 4679070 (W.D.N.Y. Aug. 30, 2013). In so deciding, the Court found that the compliance reports qualified as judicial documents, since they were filed with the Court in a matter over which the Court retained jurisdiction and since they were relevant to the Court's exercise of judicial authority. Id. at *8–11. It then considered whether, under the First Amendment or the common law, the presumption of public access that applies to such judicial documents would mandate unsealing, and concluded that it would not. Id. at *12, *14.

The Court first found that the reports, though judicial documents, were not within the subset of such documents entitled to a First Amendment right of access. The Court construed the compliance reports to be akin to settlement negotiation documents, and believing that they had little bearing on its own exercise of Article III power, it held that they were not the types of judicial documents that the First Amendment would require be made available to the public. Id. at *11–12.

The Court also found that while the common law presumption of access was applicable to the reports, it was a weak presumption. Id. at *13–14. Here, too, the reports were construed by the Court to be similar to settlement negotiation documents and, as such, subject to the need for the kind of frank discussion among the parties that might be diluted upon disclosure. On that basis, the Court determined that the common law presumption of access was overcome. Id.

Accordingly, the District Court denied NYCLU's motion to unseal the compliance reports and declined to vacate its own standing order regarding the sealing of future reports.⁵Id. at *15. NYCLU appeals.⁶

We review the District Court's decision for abuse of discretion, although, since the First Amendment is implicated, we give the documents and proceedings “close appellate scrutiny.” Newsday LLC v. County of Nassau, 730 F.3d 156, 163 (2d Cir.2013). Indeed, in such cases, “we have traditionally undertaken an independent review of sealed documents, despite the fact that such a review may raise factual rather than legal issues.” Id.

II.

The notion that the public should have access to the proceedings and documents of courts is integral to our system of government. To ensure that ours is indeed a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, it is essential that the people themselves have the ability to learn of, monitor, and respond to the actions of their representatives and their representative institutions. This principle, as it applies to courts, has a long history. Indeed, the common law right of public access to judicial documents is said to predate even the Constitution itself. See United States v. Amodeo, 44 F.3d 141, 145 (2d Cir.1995) (“ Amodeo I ”).

As the common law right of public access has developed in this Circuit's doctrine, our approach to determining whether a document is a judicial document, and therefore one presumed to be publicly accessible, has been to emphasize the role of the document in the judicial process. Thus, in order to decide whether a document is a judicial document protected by the common law right of access, this Court considers whether it is “relevant to the performance of the judicial function and useful in the judicial process.” Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga, 435 F.3d 110, 119 (2d Cir.2006) (internal quotation marks omitted).

If we find that a document is a judicial document and therefore that at least a common law presumption of access applies, we must “determine the weight” of the presumption of access. Id. The weight to be given to the presumption of access is “governed by the role of the material at issue in the exercise of Article III judicial power and the resultant value of such information to those monitoring the federal courts.” United States v. Amodeo, 71 F.3d 1044, 1049 (2d Cir.1995) (“ Amodeo II ”). “Finally, after determining the weight of the presumption of access, ...