Civil Rights Corps. v. Cushman

Background

Civil Rights Corps. and six law professors filed suit against Georgia Pestana, Melinda Katz, Andrea Bonina, Justice Hector D. LaSalle, and Diana Maxfield Kearse. The plaintiffs had filed 21 grievance complaints concerning current and former Queens District Attorney’s Office employees and created a website about their campaign for prosecutorial accountability.

The plaintiffs attached seven letters to their complaint, including letters from James Johnson and Kearse and five other letters exchanged between the plaintiffs’ counsel and defendants. The exhibits were initially filed under seal because the Corporation Counsel asserted that the letters were confidential. The plaintiffs moved to unseal them. The New York Times supported the motion, while all defendants opposed it and argued that New York Judiciary Law § 90(10) required the exhibits to remain confidential.

The court emphasized that it was not deciding the merits of the plaintiffs’ underlying claims. Three defense motions to dismiss were pending, and the court stated that the exhibits were important to deciding those motions.

Common-law access

The court held that the exhibits were judicial documents. A judicial document is a court-filed document relevant to the court’s work and useful to the judicial process. The exhibits were central to the plaintiffs’ legal claims and crucial to the court’s consideration of whether the complaint satisfied the pleading requirements, whether the court had jurisdiction, and whether abstention principles supported declining jurisdiction.

Because the exhibits directly related to the plaintiffs’ allegations, the court gave the public-access presumption strong weight. The court also found a substantial public interest in disclosure because the case concerned allegations that government officials had used a secrecy law to silence plaintiffs regarding a matter of public concern. The court stated that sealing the exhibits would make it difficult for the public to understand the court’s reasoning without referring extensively to sealed material.

The defendants did not identify a concrete harm that disclosure would cause. The court noted that disclosure would not reveal details of an ongoing investigation, endanger witnesses, threaten national security, disclose trade secrets, or implicate attorney-client privilege based on the record before it.

The defendants relied primarily on § 90(10), which provides that papers and documents concerning attorney-conduct complaints, investigations, or disciplinary proceedings are sealed and confidential. The court did not decide whether letters like these generally fall within that statute. Instead, it reasoned that the statute’s stated purposes—protecting complainants and protecting a professional’s reputation—did not support sealing here. The law professors were the complainants, and the information and grievance complaints at issue were already public because the plaintiffs had published them online. The court therefore concluded that § 90(10) did not require the exhibits to remain sealed.

First Amendment access

The court separately held that the First Amendment right of public access applied to the exhibits. It reasoned that complaints have historically been publicly accessible and that access helps the public understand federal court activity, promotes accountability, and informs the public about matters of concern. Because the exhibits were integral to the complaint, the court treated them similarly for access purposes.

The First Amendment right of access is qualified, meaning it can be overcome if sealing is essential to protect a higher value and is narrowly tailored to that purpose. The court found that the defendants had not made that showing. It stated that even if § 90(10) applied, the defendants had not shown that sealing was narrowly tailored to protect the interests identified by the statute. The court also explained that a state law cannot override a conflicting constitutional right of access.

Disposition

Judge Victor Marrero granted the plaintiffs’ motion to unseal all seven exhibits to the complaint. He directed the plaintiffs to re-file the complaint with all exhibits attached for public viewing. The order did not decide the merits of the underlying lawsuit or the pending motions to dismiss.