Richardson v. The National Basketball Association
- Denise Cote
- 1:23-cv-06926
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 4
In Richardson v. National Basketball Association, Judge Cote received defendants’ sealing request; the provided text contains no court ruling.
The requested sealing or redaction would affect the National Basketball Association, NBA Services Corp., Richardson, nonparty NBA players and referees, other NBA employees, participants in the arbitration hearing, and the public’s access to filings in the case.
What happened
Richardson v. National Basketball Association concerns a request by the National Basketball Association and NBA Services Corp. to keep certain materials from being publicly available in the case.
The defendants asked to seal or redact information about nonparties’ health and personal information, confidential business information, and information from a confidential arbitration hearing. They also asked to restrict related discussions in their court filings.
Judge Cote is identified as the judge, but the provided text is a defense letter-motion and does not state that the court granted or denied the request.
The detailed version
- Richardson v. The National Basketball Association · No. 1:23-cv-06926
- Denise Cote
- Mar. 3, 2025
Nature of the filing
The provided text is a letter-motion from the National Basketball Association and NBA Services Corp. (together, the defendants) asking the court to seal or redact materials filed in support of their motion for summary judgment and their motion to exclude the opinions and testimony of Dr. Harvey A. Risch. The letter is signed by Elise M. Bloom of Proskauer Rose LLP.
Requested sealing
The defendants identified three categories of information for sealing or redaction:
- Private information concerning nonparties, including NBA players and referees. The examples include vaccination and infection status, medical or religious exemptions from COVID-19 vaccination policies, private conversations, and some personal addresses or email addresses.
- Confidential or proprietary business information, including health and safety protocols for NBA players and referees during the 2020–2021 and 2021–2022 seasons and information about the NBA’s business operations.
- Nonpublic information from a Vaccination Exemption Board arbitration hearing between the National Basketball Referees Association, on behalf of Richardson, and NBA Services Corp.
The defendants also requested limited redactions to related discussions in their legal memoranda, their statement of undisputed material facts, and later briefing connected to the motions. They stated that they were not seeking to seal information that Richardson had already publicly filed in the action.
Legal standard described
The letter describes the Second Circuit’s three-step approach to requests for public access to court documents: determining whether the materials are judicial documents, weighing the public’s presumptive right of access based on the materials’ role in the court’s exercise of judicial power, and balancing that interest against competing considerations. The defendants argued that privacy interests of nonparties, protection of sensitive health information, protection of confidential business information, and the confidentiality associated with arbitration justified their narrowly tailored requests.
Disposition
The provided text does not include a court order or state whether Judge Denise L. Cote granted, denied, or otherwise decided the sealing request. Accordingly, no disposition can be reported from this text.
Read the full 4-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.