Pierce v. East Bay Municipal Utility District
- Alex Tse
- 3:21-cv-04325
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 1
In Pierce v. East Bay Municipal Utility District, Judge Tse denied defendants’ motion to seal deposition excerpts and ordered public filing.
The defendants must publicly file the deposition excerpts and an unredacted summary-judgment motion; the ruling also preserves public access to those filings.
What happened
In Pierce v. East Bay Municipal Utility District, the defendants asked to keep excerpts from Dorian West Blair’s deposition transcript private. They had submitted the excerpts with their motion for summary judgment.
The court said the excerpts could not be sealed merely because the deposition had been designated confidential. West Blair, formerly the utility district’s diversity and inclusion officer, testified about matters relevant to the case, and the excerpts did not contain information that needed to remain private.
The court denied the defendants’ motion to seal. Judge Alex G. Tse ordered the defendants to file a public version of the excerpts and an unredacted version of their summary-judgment motion by March 3, 2023.
The detailed version
- Pierce v. East Bay Municipal Utility District · No. 3:21-cv-04325
- Alex Tse
- Feb. 23, 2023
Background
The defendants moved to seal excerpts from Dorian West Blair’s deposition transcript. They had submitted the excerpts with their motion for summary judgment. The only stated basis for sealing was that the court had designated West Blair’s deposition as confidential.
Court’s analysis
The court applied the “compelling reasons” standard governing requests to seal documents filed at the summary-judgment stage. It held that a confidentiality designation, by itself, was not a compelling reason to seal deposition excerpts attached to a dispositive motion. The court also noted that West Blair, formerly the East Bay Municipal Utility District’s diversity and inclusion officer, testified about matters relevant to the merits of the case. The submitted excerpts did not reveal anything that needed to be withheld from public view.
Ruling
The court denied the defendants’ motion to seal. It ordered the defendants to file a public version of the West Blair deposition excerpts and an unredacted version of the motion for summary judgment by March 3, 2023. This order addressed sealing and did not decide the summary-judgment motion itself.
Read the full 1-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.