McKoy v. The Trump Corporation and Donald J. Trump

Background

The order addressed several requests to seal or redact documents connected to three matters: the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification, the defendants’ motion for summary judgment, and a non-party’s renewed motion to intervene. A document is a “judicial document” when it is relevant to the court’s work, making it subject to a presumption that the public may access it. The court must then weigh that presumption against specific competing interests, such as protecting sensitive business or personal information. Any sealing must be narrowly tailored, meaning it must hide no more information than necessary.

Class-Certification Materials

The parties and non-parties had agreed to remove some confidentiality designations from class-certification filings. An earlier order had denied certain sealing motions without prejudice to renewal and required a sufficient explanation for any renewed request. ACN Opportunity, LLC asked to keep seventeen documents entirely under seal, citing internal financial data, marketing strategies, market information, financial reports, meeting minutes, employee and independent-business-owner compensation, and other employment information.

The court found that class-certification exhibits were judicial documents because they were relevant to deciding whether the case met the requirements for a class action. Although sensitive business and personal information could justify carefully limited redactions, ACN had not shown that keeping the entire seventeen documents sealed was narrowly tailored. The court considered ACN’s November 29, 2023, request timely, but DENIED the sealing requests without prejudice to renewal. The documents already filed under seal were to remain sealed temporarily.

Summary-Judgment Materials

Sealing motions were filed at Dkt. Nos. 572, 601, and 613 in connection with the defendants’ motion for summary judgment. The plaintiffs took no position on sealing but noted that the redacted information had been designated confidential under a protective order. The defendants said they could not give up protection for information designated confidential by ACN and/or the defendants. ACN relied on earlier letters that the court had previously found insufficient.

The court explained that documents submitted for consideration on a summary-judgment motion are judicial documents and ordinarily receive the strongest presumption of public access. Here, however, the summary-judgment motion had been denied without prejudice as part of an order dismissing the case, so the presumption was weaker because the motion had not been decided on the merits. The court nevertheless found that vague claims of possible harm and reliance on a protective order did not justify sealing. It DENIED the motions at Dkt. Nos. 572, 601, and 613 without prejudice to renewal. The documents currently under seal were to remain sealed temporarily.

Renewal Procedure

ACN and/or any party could file a renewed sealing motion by February 20, 2024. The renewed motion had to propose specific, narrow redactions, group the proposed redactions by justification, assign each category a color and number, and submit sealed copies of the unredacted documents with the proposed redactions highlighted and identified by category. Any renewed request concerning the class-certification and summary-judgment materials was to be combined into one motion when relevant. If no timely motion was filed, the parties were directed to file the relevant documents publicly by February 21, 2024.

Non-Party’s Intervention Motion

Non-party Raj K. Patel filed a motion to redact at Dkt. No. 660 in connection with a renewed motion to intervene. The court had previously denied his original intervention motion and later directed him not to make further substantive filings in the action. He filed the renewed intervention motion without permission. An earlier order had dismissed the plaintiffs’ claims without prejudice to refiling in state court and denied pending motions, including the renewed intervention motion.

The court held that a motion to intervene is a judicial document even when it is denied. It found that this renewed motion played only a negligible role in the court’s work because it was untimely, was not properly before the court, and was denied as part of the case’s dismissal. Patel identified seven claimed bases for redaction and sought to keep the entire motion under seal, but the court found those bases vague, conclusory, and inapplicable to the identified paragraphs. The court therefore DENIED his motion to file a redacted version of the renewed motion to intervene.

Disposition

Judge Lorna G. Schofield ordered the clerk to close the motions at Dkt. Nos. 572, 601, 613, and 660, make the filings at Dkt. Nos. 659 and 660 public, and mail a copy of the order to Raj K. Patel. The order did not decide the merits of the plaintiffs’ underlying claims or the defendants’ summary-judgment motion.