Media Not Entitled to Instant Access to Documents, Court Says

A federal appeals court, in a major blow to the news media, ruled Friday that there is no First Amendment right entitling the public to instant access to documents in a civil trial.

The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia rejected claims by a reporters’ advocacy group that judges cannot categorically seal documents during civil proceedings without first determining the need for secrecy.

The 2-1 panel ruling came in a challenge to the sealing of documents in the libel trial against the Washington Post by former Mobil Oil chief William Tavoulareas.

Before the trial, Mobil asked the judge to close more than 3,800 pages of documents, which it said contained sensitive information that could benefit competitors in the shipping industry. The documents were included in 52 trial exhibits that also were ordered closed by U.S. District Judge Oliver Gasch.

Because the judge did not have time to review the need for confidentiality on a document-by-document basis, he sealed all of the records and postponed a ruling on their confidentiality until after the trial ended.

Judge Antonin Scalia, writing for the court, said the District Court handled the problem in a reasonable way, despite the reporters’ claims that the documents lost their news value once the trial was over. Scalia noted that all of the documents eventually were released to the public.

Scalia wrote, “The District Court could, without violating the First Amendment to the Constitution, categorically refuse the reporters’ access to the materials at issue . . . . The reporters thus had no First Amendment entitlement to a document-by-document determination of the need for confidentiality” until after the trial came to a close.

The appeal was filed by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and four reporters who were denied access to Mobil documents gathered in interviews or presented as evidence in the well-publicized libel trial.