Muhaymin v. Phoenix, City of

CourtDistrict Court, D. Arizona
DecidedNovember 2, 2021
Docket2:17-cv-04565
StatusUnknown

This text of Muhaymin v. Phoenix, City of (Muhaymin v. Phoenix, City of) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Arizona primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Muhaymin v. Phoenix, City of, (D. Ariz. 2021).

Opinion

1 WO 2 3 4 5 6 IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 7 FOR THE DISTRICT OF ARIZONA

9 Mussalina Muhaymin, et al., No. CV-17-04565-PHX-DLR

10 Plaintiffs, ORDER

11 v.

12 City of Phoenix, et al.,

13 Defendants. 14 15 16 Before the Court are three motions to intervene for the limited purpose of moving 17 to unseal judicial records. (Docs. 357, 358, 363.) These motions were filed by Muslim 18 Advocates, the Associated Press, and Lei Ann Stickney, respectively (collectively 19 “Proposed Intervenors”). Each motion contains two requests: (1) for permission to 20 intervene in this matter and (2) for the Court to unseal judicial records. The Court will 21 grant the first request in full and grant the second request in part. 22 I. Permissive Intervention 23 “Nonparties seeking access to a judicial record in a civil case may do so by seeking 24 permissive intervention[.]” San Jose Mercury News, Inc. v. U.S. Dist. Court—N. Dist. (San 25 Jose), 187 F.3d 1096, 1100 (9th Cir. 1999). Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 24(b) governs 26 permissive intervention and provides, in relevant part, that “on timely motion, the court 27 may permit anyone to intervene who . . . has a claim or defense that shares with the main 28 action a common question of law or fact.” Thus, “[p]ermissive intervention to litigate a 1 claim on the merits under Rule 24(b) requires (1) an independent ground for jurisdiction; 2 (2) a timely motion; and (3) a common question of law and fact between the movant’s 3 claim or defense and the main action.” Beckman Industries, Inc. v. International Ins. Co., 4 966 F.2d 470, 473 (9th Cir. 1992) (emphasis added). But when permissive intervention is 5 sought only for the limited purpose of moving to unseal judicial records—rather than to 6 litigate claim on the merits—the first and third elements do not apply. Id. at 473-74. 7 Instead, the Court’s discretion is guided by the timeliness of the motion and “whether the 8 intervention will unduly delay or prejudice the adjudication of the original parties’ rights.” 9 Fed. R. Civ. P. 24(b)(3). 10 Defendants oppose the Proposed Intervenors’ motions to intervene, arguing that 11 Muslim Advocates and Stickney lack “standing” to intervene because they do not have a 12 sufficient interest in this litigation, that all Proposed Intervenors waited too long to 13 intervene, and that intervention at this time would unduly prejudice the existing parties by 14 diverting resources away from trial preparation. (Docs. 364, 365, 371.) 15 The Court rejects the first argument; as already noted, a non-party moving to 16 intervene solely for the purpose of accessing records need not show a nexus of fact or law 17 with the main action. Beckman, 966 F.2d at 474. Moreover, the public has a common law 18 right to access court records. San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d at 1100. As members of 19 the public, all Proposed Intervenors have “standing,” to use Defendants’ chosen term, to 20 seek such access. 21 The Court also finds all three motions timely. Here, the motions to intervene were 22 filed less than two years after the Court first began sealing documents in this case (Doc. 23 99), and mere weeks after the Court sealed its order on Defendants’ summary judgment 24 motion (Doc. 352), which, together with the summary judgment briefing, are the highest 25 priority items to which the Proposed Intervenors seek access. (Doc. 358 at 6.) “[D]elays 26 measured in years have been tolerated where an intervenor is pressing the public’s right of 27 access to judicial records.” San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d at 1101. 28 1 Lastly, the Court does not find Defendants’ arguments concerning prejudice to be 2 persuasive. The mere fact that Defendants will need to explain why the relevant records 3 should remain sealed is not, itself, unduly prejudicial. It is, after all, their burden to 4 establish that either good cause or compelling reasons justify curtailing the public’s right 5 to access judicial records. Moreover, the Court recently rescheduled the trial in this matter 6 to begin on April 25, 2022. (Doc. 359.) This schedule leaves plenty of time to adjudicate 7 the merits of the Proposed Intervenors’ motions to unseal without adversely impacting the 8 parties’ trial preparations. 9 For these reasons, all three Proposed Intervenors will be granted permission to 10 intervene for the limited purpose of seeking to unseal records in this case. 11 II. Propriety of Sealing Judicial Records 12 The public has a right to access judicial records. San Jose Mercury News, 187 F.3d 13 at 1101. The Court therefore begins “with a strong presumption in favor of access to court 14 records.” Foltz v. State Farm Mut. Auto Ins. Co., 331 F.3d 1122, 1135 (9th Cir. 2003). A 15 party seeking to overcome this presumption and file a judicial record under seal generally 16 must provide a compelling reason for doing so. Ctr. for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Grp., LLC, 17 809 F.3d 1092, 1096 (9th Cir. 2016). Examples of compelling reasons “include when a 18 court record might be used to gratify private spite or promote public scandal, to circulate 19 libelous statements, or as sources of business information that might harm a litigant’s 20 competitive standing.” Id. (internal quotations and citation omitted). A movant’s reason 21 for seeking to seal a judicial record must be supported by an articulable factual basis, rather 22 than “hypothesis or conjecture.” Id. at 1096-97 (internal quotations and citation omitted). 23 The Ninth Circuit has carved out an exception to this general rule “for sealed 24 materials attached to a discovery motion unrelated to the merits of the case.” Id. at 1097. 25 A party seeking to seal such materials “need only satisfy the less exacting ‘good cause’ 26 standard.” Id. Although earlier decisions from the Ninth Circuit sometimes used the words 27 “dispositive” and “non-dispositive” to describe the dividing line between those records 28 governed by the compelling reasons standard and those governed by the good cause 1 standard, the Ninth Circuit has since clarified that “[t]he focus . . . is on whether the motion 2 at issue is more than tangentially related to the underlying cause of action.” Id. at 1099. 3 Sometimes non-dispositive motions are unrelated or only tangentially related to the merits 4 of a case; other times they “are strongly correlative to the merits of a case.” Id. The 5 exception to the ordinary compelling reasons standard applies only to judicial records that 6 are unrelated or merely tangentially related to the merits of a case. Sealing a record that is 7 more than tangentially related to the merits of a case requires a compelling justification. 8 Using this framework, the Court will address each sealed docket entry. 9 Docket Entry 99, filed under seal on November 20, 2019, is a Notice of Deposition 10 of a minor, A.M., filed by Defendants. This record was sealed because it contains the 11 minor’s full name in violation Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2, which requires such information to be 12 redacted. (Docs. 299, 300.) When confronted with such non-compliant filings, it is the 13 undersigned’s practice to seal the document containing the private information and to order 14 the filing party to publicly file a version of the document that redacts the private 15 information.

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