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Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Courts - U.S. Supreme Court Denies Secret Litigation Challenge
Shannon P. Duffy of The Legal Intelligencer reports today in a story that begins:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by The Legal Intelligencer challenging decisions by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that approved the "blanket" sealing of a lawsuit, including all documents and the courts' dockets at both the trial and appellate levels.But just days before the high court turned down the appeal, the 3rd Circuit announced in a one-page memo to the bar that it will no longer allow the sealing of appellate dockets.
"Because the text of the docket contains procedural information only, Court of Appeals dockets will not be sealed," 3rd Circuit Clerk Marcia M. Waldron wrote in a notice to the bar that was posted on the court's Web site Nov. 4.
Attorney Robert C. Clothier of Fox Rothschild, who represented The Legal Intelligencer before the 3rd Circuit and the Supreme Court, said he was "gratified that the 3rd Circuit has remedied one of the significant issues we were raising."
Clothier said he hopes that the district courts within the 3rd Circuit follow the appellate court's lead and "establish rules that say dockets are always open."
In the petition for certiorari, Clothier argued that the high court should reverse a series of rulings by the 3rd Circuit in Doe v. C.A.R.S. Protection Plus Inc. that allowed the case to be litigated in secret.
For more than seven years, all court documents in the Doe case were under seal, including the court dockets in the Western District of Pennsylvania and the 3rd Circuit.The public first learned of the existence of the case in May, when the 3rd Circuit handed down a precedent-setting decision that said a woman who claimed she was fired because she had an abortion had the right to sue under Title VII.
The unanimous three-judge panel reversed a lower court's decision that dismissed a sex discrimination suit brought by a woman -- identified in court papers only as "Jane Doe" -- who claimed she was fired three days after she opted to have an abortion because tests showed that the fetus had severe deformities.
Ruling on a question of first impression, the 3rd Circuit held that Title VII, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, protects a worker's right to terminate a pregnancy because an abortion qualifies as a "related medical condition."
[Emphasis added by ILB]
Posted by Marcia Oddi on November 12, 2008 09:54 AM
Posted to Courts in general