Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College et al

Filing 394

Leave to file granted on April 6, 2018 Letter/request (non-motion) from Amici Curiae . (Schutz, Sigmund)

April 6, 2018
Honorable Allison D. Burroughs
U.S. District Court, District of Massachusetts
John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse
1 Courthouse Way
Boston, MA 02210
Re. Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows
of Harvard College (Harvard Corporation)
Docket No. 1:14-cv-14176-ADB
Leave to file granted on April 6, 2018
Dear Judge Burroughs:
Because public access to records filed with the court to support or
oppose disposition of civil litigation on the merits is a critical part of an
open and transparent justice system, amici curiae the New England
First Amendment Coalition, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of
the Press, the Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association, and
GateHouse Media, LLC respectfully request that the court allow sealed
summary judgment filings only if inescapably necessary. The amici are
public interest groups, an association of Massachusetts newspapers,
and the owner of numerous weekly and daily newspapers in
Massachusetts and throughout the United States.
The Coalition’s concern is not whether Harvard’s admission process
violates federal civil rights law, but instead that judicial records
shedding light on this dispute—which is of exceptional public
importance and community interest—remain open to the public. The
presumption in favor of access to judicial records sets a high bar before
any part of a summary judgment filing may be sealed. The First
Circuit has held that the “presumptively paramount right of the public
to know” the content of judicial records in civil cases may be overcome
for “only the most compelling reasons.” Federal Trade Comm’n. v.
Standard Fin. Mgmt. Corp., 830 F.2d 404, 408 n.4, 410 (1st Cir. 1987).
The First Circuit has repeatedly reaffirmed the “most compelling
reasons” standard. See, e.g., United States v. Kravetz, 706 F.3d 47, 59

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(1st Cir. 2013). Those seeking to overcome the presumption in favor of public access to
judicial documents “must carry the devoir of persuasion.” Standard Fin. Mgmt. Corp.,
830 F.2d at 411.
This presumption protects public access to summary judgment filings and
serves vital public interests. A provisional seal on summary judgment filings would
be contrary to First Circuit precedent prohibiting even short-term prohibitions on
access to public court records, and is not strictly necessary in this case. Less
restrictive alternatives are available.
I.

Judicial Transparency Serves Vital Public Interests.

The “strong and sturdy” presumption in favor of public access to judicial
records in civil proceedings protects public interests and improves the
administration of justice. Standard Fin. Mgmt. Corp., 830 F.2d at 410. “Public
access to judicial records and documents allows the citizenry to ‘monitor the
functioning of our courts, thereby insuring quality, honesty and respect for our legal
system.’” Id. (quoting In the Matter of Continental Illinois Securities Litig., 732
F.2d 1302, 1308 (7th Cir. 1984)). “[T]he resolution of a dispute on the merits,
whether by trial or summary judgment, is at the heart of the interest in ensuring
the public’s understanding of the judicial process and of significant public events.”
Kamakana v. City and County of Honolulu, 447 F.3d 1172,1179 (9th Cir. 2006)
(quotation marks omitted).
The Supreme Court has recognized the “beneficial effects of public scrutiny
upon the administration of justice” borne out by the presumption of openness in
judicial matters. Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Virginia, 448 U.S. 555, 593 (1980).
“People in an open society do not expect infallibility from their institutions, but it is
difficult for them to accept what they are prohibited from observing.” Id. at 572.
“The presumption of access [to judicial records] is based on the need for federal
courts, although independent — indeed, particularly because they are independent
— to have a measure of accountability and for the public to have confidence in the
administration of justice.” United States v. Amodeo, 71 F.3d 1044, 1048 (2d Cir.
1995). “[P]rofessional and public monitoring is an essential feature of democratic
control. Monitoring both provides judges with critical views of their work and
deters arbitrary judicial behavior. Without monitoring, moreover, the public could
have no confidence in the conscientiousness, reasonableness, or honesty of judicial
proceedings.” Id.

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Honorable Allison D. Burroughs
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Referring to the “public’s exercise of its common law access right in civil
cases[,]” the Third Circuit recognized:
As with other branches of government, the bright light cast upon the judicial
process by public observation diminishes the possibilities for injustice,
incompetence, perjury, and fraud. Furthermore, the very openness of the
process should provide the public with a more complete understanding of the
judicial system and a better perception of its fairness.

Republic of the Phil. V. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 949 F.2d 653, 660 (3d Cir. 1991).
Secrecy undermines the legitimacy of judicial action:
What happens in the halls of government is presumptively open to public
scrutiny. Judges deliberate in private but issue public decisions after public
arguments based on public records. The political branches of government
claim legitimacy by election, judges by reason. Any step that withdraws an
element of the judicial process from public view makes the ensuing decision
look more like fiat; this requires rigorous justification.

In the Matter of Grand Jury Proceedings, 983 F.2d 74, 78 (7th Cir. 1992). To put it
simply, “Litigation necessarily takes place in a public forum.” Sinclair v. Brill, 815
F.Supp. 44, 52 (D.N.H. 1993) (denying motion to seal motion for judgment on the
pleadings).
II.

Summary Judgment Filings Are Presumptively Public.

The First Circuit has “rule[d]” that “relevant documents, which are submitted
to, and accepted by, a court of competent jurisdiction in the course of adjudicatory
proceedings, become documents to which the presumption of public access applies.”
Standard Fin. Mgmt. Corp., 830 F.2d at 409. “Once . . . submissions come to the
attention of the district judge, they can fairly be assumed to play a role in the
court’s deliberations.” Id. Whether the court actually relies on specific information
submitted to it when making a decision does not matter for purposes of the
presumption. See United States v. Kravetz, 706 F.3d 47, 58-59 (1st Cir. 2013). The
First Circuit has “explicitly rejected an approach to public access that would turn on
whether the documents at issue actually played a role in the court’s deliberations.”
Id. Because the court will unquestionably engage in an adjudicatory function
concerning the litigants’ substantive rights in rendering a summary judgment

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Honorable Allison D. Burroughs
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decision, all filed materials relating to summary judgment are subject to the
presumption in favor of public access.
III.

A Provisional Seal on Summary Judgment Filings Is Not Necessary to
Protect a Compelling Interest.

Harvard has proposed a provisional seal on the parties’ summary judgment
provisions out of concern for two categories of records: (A) records personally
identifying a student or applicant; and (B) records disclosing information about
Harvard’s admissions process. Harvard argues that the presence of this
information among the to-be-filed summary judgment materials warrants a
provisional seal on all filings. The amici disagree.
The first category of information—student and applicant identities—is a nonissue since that information can be protected without a provisional seal on all
filings. SFFA commits that it will not publicly file information identifying any
student or applicant. [ECF No. 388 p. 2 (“SFFA will redact the summary judgment
record to ensure that the identity of any Harvard applicant or student (present or
former) will not be disclosed.”); p. 4 (SFFA agreed to “work with Harvard to redact
any document to ensure applicants and students are not individually identifiable”).]
A further safeguard against public filing of such information is that Harvard says
that it only produced in discovery largely, although not perfectly, de-identified
information. [ECF No. 389 p. 3.]
The other category of information concerns Harvard’s admissions process.
The burden falls on it to show that disclosure of specific information about its
process would cause harm so great that a seal is strictly necessary. Standard Fin.
Mgmt. Corp., 830 F.2d at 411. A difficulty with Harvard’s argument is that
comparable admissions information to what it describes—the inner workings of its
process—has been made public in the course of other similar litigation without
apparent dire consequences. One illustrative example is Fisher v. Univ. of Texas at
Austin, 645 F. Supp. 2d 587 (W.D. Tex. 2009),1 a high-profile challenge to the
University of Texas’ admissions process. There, the public docket contains not only
fully accessible summary judgment briefing, but as is typical, supporting exhibits,
affidavits, and deposition transcripts. That public information paints an intricately
detailed picture of the University’s admissions process, including that applicants
seeking admission are evaluated “on an admissions matrix for their preferred
1

631 F.3d 213 (5th Cir. 2011), vacated and remanded, 570 U.S. 297 (2013).

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programs based on their AI/PAI [Academic Index/Personal Achievement Index]
scores where AI is on the X-axis and PAI is on the Y-axis[;]” that the basis of an
applicant’s AI computation comprises four components described in the materials;
and that “[t]he equation for calculating an applicant’s PAI is [(personal achievement
score*4) + (mean essay score*3)]/7. Defs.' Mot. for Summ. J. Statement of Facts,
ECF No. 94-2. The record contains public information about the scoring parameters
and admission standards of individual programs relative to others. See Defs.’ CrossMot. for Summ. J. Tab 7, Aff. of Kendra B. Ishop ¶ 12, ECF. No. 96-9 (“Ishop Aff.”)
(class of 2008 “A” group applicants admitted solely on AI score basis needed 3.9 AI
for Liberal Arts versus 3.4 AI for Bilingual Education program; “C” group
applicants were those whose 2.599 or below AI “rendered their admissions chances
highly unlikely” but were nonetheless afforded file review by a senior admissions
reader as a matter of protocol). Because the court is a public institution,
information about the inner workings of Harvard’s admission process will
unavoidably be made public in this litigation, as has been true repeatedly of other
institutions’ admissions processes in other similar litigation.
Even if some specific information about Harvard’s admissions process might
warrant a seal, then only that information, and nothing more, could be sealed. See
Lugosch v. Pyramid Co. of Onondaga, 435 F.3d 110, 124 (2d Cir. 2006) (“continued
sealing of the documents may be justified only with specific, on-the-record findings
that sealing is necessary to preserve higher values and only if the sealing order is
narrowly tailored to achieve that aim”); Bradford & Bigelow, Inc. v. Richardson, 109
F. Supp. 3d 445, 449 (D. Mass. 2015) (“any sealing” must be “narrowly tailored to
shield as little from public view as possible”). The presence of non-public
information in a document would not justify a seal on the remaining information in
the same document, much less a seal on the entire summary judgment record.
To file “provisionally under seal” all of the briefs and supporting documents,
as Harvard suggests [EFF No. 389 p. 1], would be contrary to First Circuit
precedent holding that blanket seals impermissibly “reverse[ ] the constitutional
presumption of public access to documents.” In re Providence Journal, 293 F.3d 1,
12 (1st Cir. 2002). A provisional seal also would be contrary to First Circuit
authority holding that even short delays cannot be squared with the right to access
court records. Globe Newspaper Co. v. Pokaski, 868 F.2d 497, 507 (1st Cir. 1989)
(“even a one or two day delay impermissibly burdens the First Amendment”). A
provisional seal on the parties’ summary judgment filings would make secret too
much information for too long.

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Honorable Allison D. Burroughs
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Less restrictive alternatives to a provisional seal are available. First,
the parties could be required to exchange to-be-filed summary judgment
submissions shortly prior to the deadline for filing to allow opposing counsel to
mark any information that counsel is prepared to certify merits a seal under the
“most compelling reasons” standard. Such information could then be redacted from
a public version of the filing, with a complete version filed under seal. If the parties
disagree about whether requested redactions meet the standard, the court could
expeditiously resolve that dispute after in camera review. This is not much more
work than what would take place after the parties’ filings under Harvard’s proposal.
[See ECF No. 389 p. 2 (proposing a post-filing meet and confer with disagreements
submitted to the court for resolution).] Because of the exceptional nature of this
case, amici suggest that the court apply an additional check on redactions by
determining for itself soon once filings are made, after in camera review and
regardless of the parties’ agreement, whether redactions are justified by compelling
reason.
Second, Harvard could identify the information that it is prepared to certify
meets the “most compelling reasons” standard applicable to sealed summary
judgment filings. It has marked many documents “confidential,” and further
screening of those documents may be burdensome, but enough time remains before
the summary judgment deadline to complete that effort. Presumably, Harvard
would only certify that a far smaller universe of information in some subset of
“confidential” documents meets the “most compelling reasons” standard necessary
to justify a seal. See Kamakana, 447 F.3d at 1179 (“a ‘good cause’ showing alone
will not suffice to fulfill the ‘compelling reasons’ standard that a party must meet to
rebut the presumption of access to dispositive pleadings and attachments”). Such a
review may be inevitable because SFFA may be challenging Harvard’s designation
of many documents as “confidential” under the far lower “good cause” standard
applicable to documents exchanged for purposes of discovery, but never filed with
the court. The parties could meet and confer and, if necessary, seek a court order
after in camera review of a representative sample of such documents prior to the
deadline for filing.
Third, the court can determine whether Harvard’s submissions so far have
met its burden to show compelling reasons for a seal with respect to any specific
documents or information, and enter an order. The parties would then be guided by
the court when they make their filings. Any redactions to summary judgment
filings would be made in accordance with the court’s guidance, and the public would
have immediate access to a public version of each filed document.

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These or similar alternatives to a provisional seal on all filings would allow
public access to as much information as possible as early as possible, as required by
the strong presumption in favor of public access to summary judgment filings.
Conclusion
The amici appreciate the opportunity to present their views.
Respectfully submitted,

/s/ Sigmund D. Schutz
/s/ Eric G. Penley
Sigmund D. Schutz, Bar No. 568608
Eric G. Penley, Bar No. 678920
cc:

ECF Recipients

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Honorable Allison D. Burroughs
April 6, 2018
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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE
I, Sigmund D. Schutz, Attorney for amici curiae, hereby certify that on
the above date, I electronically filed the above letter with the Clerk of Court
using the CM/ECF system which will send notification of such filing(s)
electronically to counsel of record.

/s/ Sigmund D. Schutz
Sigmund D. Schutz, BBO # 568608
PRETI, FLAHERTY, BELIVEAU,
& PACHIOS, LLP
One City Center
P.O. Box 9546
Portland, ME 04112-9546
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

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