Stephens v. DOE
- James Donato
- 3:23-cv-04183
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Stephens v. Doe, Judge Donato ended the show-cause order and allowed limited sealing while requiring public filings by January 11, 2024.
P. Bart Stephens and members of the public seeking access to the court filings.
What happened
P. Bart Stephens v. Jane Doe concerns Stephens’s requests to keep parts of court filings secret. The court had previously denied several requests and ordered Stephens to file public, unredacted versions of provisionally sealed documents.
Stephens argued that the show-cause order should be withdrawn because he had voluntarily ended his lawsuit. The court rejected that argument, explaining that ending the case did not eliminate the public’s right to access earlier filings. Stephens also renewed his request to keep the names of certain service providers secret and submitted additional information from a cybersecurity professional about the risk of harm from a type of fraud he allegedly experienced.
Judge Donato terminated the show-cause order. The court allowed Stephens not to disclose the names of his email, cloud-storage, cellphone, and cryptocurrency-exchange providers, but ordered him to file otherwise compliant, unredacted public copies by January 11, 2024.
The detailed version
- Stephens v. DOE · No. 3:23-cv-04183
- James Donato
- Jan. 4, 2024
Background
The court had previously denied several of P. Bart Stephens’s requests to seal information in court filings. It also issued an Order to Show Cause after Stephens did not comply with an order requiring him to file unredacted public versions of provisionally sealed documents. Stephens had replaced his prior counsel with a new attorney and responded that the Order to Show Cause should be withdrawn because he had voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit.
Sealing request
The court rejected Stephens’s argument that ending the lawsuit removed the public’s right to access filings made before the case ended. Stephens renewed his request to seal the names of his email, cloud-storage, cellphone, and cryptocurrency-exchange providers. Earlier requests had been denied because Stephens had not shown specific facts establishing that disclosure would cause harm. His renewed request included a declaration from a cybersecurity professional discussing the type of “SIM swap” fraud Stephens was said to have experienced. The court found that the new information showed a meaningful risk of injury without sealing.
Ruling
The court terminated the Order to Show Cause. Regarding the earlier sealing order, the court ordered that Stephens need not disclose the names of his service providers. It also ordered him to file, by January 11, 2024, unredacted public copies of the documents that otherwise complied with the earlier order.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.