Seaman v. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust 2007-2

Background

This order concerns filings in Seaman v. National Collegiate Student Loan Trust 2007-2 and the related Bifulco action, including documents submitted in connection with the plaintiffs’ pending motion for class certification. In an earlier order dated March 10, 2022, the court denied four requests to keep most of the supporting and opposing evidence under seal. The court nevertheless delayed unsealing the documents and allowed renewed sealing requests by March 24, 2022.

The parties then submitted a joint letter. The defendants asked to keep Exhibit M to Asher Hawkins’s June 3, 2021 declaration under seal and requested additional time to make unspecified redactions for private information. The plaintiffs consented to additional time while the defendants completed their redactions and did not object to unsealing documents that the plaintiffs had introduced during the class-certification proceedings. The court found that the letter did not clearly identify all documents the defendants wanted to redact and did not address the status of several other temporarily sealed filings, including declarations and plaintiffs’ briefs.

Rulings

The court ordered that Exhibit D to the Hawkins declaration, identified as Docket No. 315-13, remain under seal for substantially the reasons stated in the parties’ March 24 letter. The court ordered the following materials to be unsealed: Exhibits G through K and Q to the Hawkins declaration; Exhibits A and I to Hawkins’s reply declaration; and Exhibit D to Hawkins’s supplemental declaration.

The court also ordered the parties to jointly file, no later than April 26, 2022, a list of every remaining declaration, exhibit, and brief previously filed under temporary seal in support of or opposition to the class-certification motion. For each document, the parties must state whether it can be unsealed by agreement, whether at least one party believes it should remain sealed, or whether at least one party believes it should be publicly filed only in redacted form.

For documents that a party seeks to keep sealed, the requesting party must specifically show that sealing is essential to preserve higher values and is narrowly tailored to protect that interest. For documents proposed for redacted public filing, the requesting party must make the same showing as to the unredacted document and the redactions, publicly file the proposed redacted version, and separately file under temporary seal a version showing the proposed redactions without applying them.