Flores v. Vang
- Laura Swain
- 1:24-cv-06676
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 2
In Flores v. Vang, Judge Swain denied Flores’s motion to seal the case and remove it from online platforms.
Valerie Flores, whose request to seal the publicly available case and filings and remove related information from online platforms was denied. The ruling also affected any appeal from the order by denying fee-free appeal status.
What happened
In Flores v. Vang, Valerie Flores asked the court to seal the case caption, the entire case, and all documents, and to remove information about the case from legal websites and search engines.
The case had been publicly available on the court’s electronic docket since September 9, 2024. The court had also transferred the action to the Central District of California before Flores filed her motion, which cited job-related and other concerns.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied the motion because the case and filings had already been public for months. The court also said it could not remove information that private internet platforms had already collected and denied fee-free appeal status after certifying that an appeal would not be taken in good faith.
The detailed version
- Flores v. Vang · No. 1:24-cv-06676
- Laura Swain
- May 28, 2025
Background
Valerie Flores filed this action on August 23, 2024. The complaint was entered on the court’s publicly available electronic docket on September 9, 2024. By an order dated and entered September 12, 2024, the court transferred the action to the United States District Court for the Central District of California.
On May 2, 2025, Flores filed a motion asking the court to seal the case caption, the entire case, and all documents, and to remove the case from legal websites and search engines including Google and Bing. She stated that she brought the motion for “various job related reasons and other factors.”
Court’s Analysis
The court noted that the action and its filings had been publicly available on the electronic docket since September 9, 2024—approximately eight months before Flores filed the motion. It held that any concerns arising from the filing of the action or the information in the filings had no legal relevance at that point because the materials had already been public.
The court also stated that, even if it sealed the docket and all submissions, it had no authority to remove information about the action that private internet platforms had already gathered.
Ruling
Judge Laura Taylor Swain denied Flores’s motion. The court also certified under 28 U.S.C. § 1915(a)(3) that any appeal from the order would not be taken in good faith and denied fee-free appeal status for that appeal.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.