Torres v. Pompeo
- Joseph Spero
- 3:19-cv-04752
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Torres v. Pompeo, Judge Spero ordered Torres to file redacted exhibits publicly by December 10, 2019, or they would be stricken from the complaint.
Armando Torres, his counsel, the Clerk, and the public record in this case.
What happened
In Torres v. Pompeo, the court addressed exhibits attached to Armando Torres’s complaint that had been temporarily sealed because some contained personal information. Torres’s counsel filed a motion to keep them sealed, but the court found that motion insufficient because it did not identify specific information to protect or provide meaningful reasons for sealing.
The court had denied the sealing motion without prejudice and allowed Torres until November 21, 2019, to file a narrower renewed motion. Torres did not do so. The court therefore ordered him to file redacted versions of the exhibits in the public record by December 10, 2019. Exhibits not filed by then would be stricken from the complaint and not considered part of the case record.
Judge Joseph C. Spero also ordered the Clerk to unseal the sealing motion and proposed order themselves. Copies of the exhibits attached to that motion would remain sealed, but the court would not consider them unless Torres filed them publicly as required. The order was entered on November 26, 2019.
The detailed version
- Torres v. Pompeo · No. 3:19-cv-04752
- Joseph Spero
- Nov. 26, 2019
Background
Armando Torres filed his complaint and several exhibits on August 14, 2019. Because some, but not all, of the exhibits contained personal information, the Clerk provisionally sealed them while awaiting an administrative motion addressing whether sensitive information should remain sealed.
Torres’s counsel filed a motion to seal, but the court found it perfunctory. The motion did not identify particular sensitive information that should remain under seal and did not provide meaningful arguments showing that compelling reasons justified restricting public access to the judicial record.
Prior ruling and deadline
On November 7, 2019, the court denied the motion to seal without prejudice. The court gave Torres until November 21, 2019, to file a renewed motion complying with Local Rule 79-5 and seeking narrowly tailored redactions to the exhibits’ public versions. The court warned that, if Torres did not file a renewed motion, it might order all documents filed in the public record.
Torres did not file a renewed motion by the deadline.
Ruling
The court ordered Torres to file the exhibits in the public record no later than December 10, 2019. He must redact information about third parties that cannot be publicly filed under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2(a), including the example identified by the court: Carmen Torres’s date of birth appearing on copies of her identification cards in Exhibit D. Torres may also redact his own personal information covered by that rule.
The court ordered that any exhibits not filed in the public record by December 10 would be stricken from the complaint and would not be considered part of the record in the action.
The court also identified an administrative docketing error: the motion to file under seal and its proposed order had themselves been filed under seal. It instructed the Clerk to unseal those documents. The copies of the complaint exhibits attached to the sealing motion, docket entry 4-3, would remain under seal, but the court would not consider them for any purpose unless Torres filed them in the public record as required.
Disposition
This was a procedural order concerning public access to court filings, redactions, and sealed exhibits. The court ordered the exhibits filed publicly subject to the stated redactions and directed the Clerk to unseal the sealing motion and proposed order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.