No Sealing of Transgender Prisoner’s Case

From Judge Scott Rash (D. Ariz.) Monday in Fly v. Diaz:

As relevant here, in the First Amended Complaint, Plaintiff asserted claims of sexual assault, threat to safety, and equal protection based on events that occurred while she was in custody at the United States Penitentiary (USP)-Tucson. {Plaintiff identifies as transgender and is also known as Toni Fly. The Court will use feminine pronouns to refer to Plaintiff.}

In Count One, Plaintiff alleged Defendants Campbell, Vasquez, and Christiansen used excessive force against her. In Count Three, Plaintiff alleged Defendants Vasquez, Gutierrez, and Wade failed to protect her from an imminent threat of assault. In Count Five, Plaintiff alleged Defendants treated her differently; placed her at risk of sexual abuse, sexual and physical assault, sexual harassment, and rape; and denied her medical treatment, access to administrative remedies and the courts, due process, equal protection, and security in her person solely because of her transgender status. Plaintiff claimed she had been denied medical care and a safe housing assignment at a female facility because she is transgender. Plaintiff alleged she had been denied medically necessary “social role transition therapy,” including gender affirming surgery, as well as assignment to a female facility for her health and safety.

In her Motion for Temporary Restraining Order, Plaintiff sought an order requiring Defendants to: immediately provide all “gender confirmation surgeries”; immediately transfer and place Plaintiff in a female housing unit or facility with non-violent females; immediately restore Plaintiff to a single cell; restore all Plaintiff’s medical treatments; restore all medical duty status accommodations and medications; restore all email, telephone, visit, and postal correspondence privileges to Plaintiff; provide all “social role” transition therapy; stop the abuse, harassment, mutilation, and rape of Plaintiff; keep Plaintiff separate from all male prisoners and staff; and stop obstructing Plaintiff’s mail correspondence. In addition, Plaintiff sought an order barring Defendants from ever placing Plaintiff in a Special Housing Unit, Special Management Unit, or Administrative Maximum cell, or any USP, Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) medium, or FCI low custody facility for male prisoners….

The court rejects the claim (for more, read the opinion), but also has this to say about plaintiff’s motion to seal:

In Plaintiff’s Motion to Seal, filed while she was in custody at FCI-Fairton, Plaintiff asks the Court to seal “the entire record” because she has been sexually and physically assaulted “due to the findings of the Court” in her criminal proceedings; Defendants previously moved to seal information threatening the safety, security, and orderly administration of the BOP, its prisoners, and Plaintiff in particular; and prisoners at FCI-Fairton are now threatening Plaintiff and “telling other inmates to pull this case” and another one of Plaintiff’s cases that was sealed in North Dakota at the request of the United States Attorney “to read what it says about Plaintiff’s criminal charge.”

Plaintiff alleges Defendant Christiansen and other Defendants informed prisoners of “sealed information to incite sexual and physical assault upon Plaintiff.” She claims prisoners are “threatening to stab her and kill her due to this information on TRULINCS and pacer.gov,” and as result, she is now in the Special Housing Unit (SHU) under “elevated protective custody” status. Plaintiff identifies one prisoner whom she alleges attempted to sexually abuse her in her cell and is now in the SHU “telling all inmates to beat, rape, and kill Plaintiff, and telling them to look up this instant case…to incite them to do this harm to Plaintiff.”

The public has a right to inspect judicial documents and records. Although this right is not absolute, there is a strong presumption in favor of access to judicial records. A party seeking to seal a judicial record bears the burden of overcoming this presumption by either meeting the “compelling reasons” standard if the record is a dispositive pleading or the “good cause” standard if the record is a non-dispositive pleading.

Moreover, the policy of promoting access to public documents dictates that only information for which there is good cause or compelling reasons to seal should be sealed. Accordingly, to the extent a party wishes to seal an entire document, rather than to redact certain information from that document, the party must provide either good cause or compelling reasons to seal all the information in that document. Otherwise, the party must only seek to redact information for which there is good cause or compelling reasons to seal.

Plaintiff’s statements in the Motion do not warrant sealing the entire case. First, as noted above, Plaintiff has been moved to the Minneapolis RRC, and her allegations regarding her safety at FCI-Fairton are no longer relevant. Second, to the extent Plaintiff asserts her criminal case in North Dakota was sealed, it appears certain documents in her criminal case were sealed, but the entire case was not. The district court’s decision in Plaintiff’s criminal case to seal certain documents does not bear on this Court’s decision to seal the entirety of this civil rights case.

Third, Plaintiff asserts the Court previously sealed certain information in this case at Defendants’ request, but, in those instances, Defendants sought to seal specific attachments to exhibits filed in response to Plaintiff’s Motions for Temporary Restraining Orders due to the sensitive nature of their content and the harm this content could potentially pose to Plaintiff and other prisoners if made public. Plaintiff has not shown good cause or compelling reasons to seal the entirety of the instant case….

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