A Tennessee federal judge kept dozens of documents hidden from public view while making “no findings whatever” to justify her decisions as required by law, an appeals court ruled.
The documents were part of a lawsuit against Brentwood-based private prison operator CoreCivic. The ruling comes after the Nashville Banner, an online news outlet, petitioned for the records to be made public.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 17 found U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger sealed 24 CoreCivic deposition transcripts that attorneys had deemed confidential, “thereby shielding from public view all kinds of information about how the defendant corporation ran its prisons.”
Outside at Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility in Hartsville, Tenn., Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.
A district judge must provide justification for keeping court records sealed, the appeals judges wrote.
“Here, in sealing these transcripts, the district court judge made no findings whatever,” they wrote.
Banner editor Steve Cavendish said he was grateful for the decision.
“Our courts have credibility when they are transparent,” Cavendish said in a written statement. “Over and over, we see things sealed from public view that should never be hidden. Part of our job as journalists is to fight for open courts so that the public can make their own decisions about what happens in them.”
The judges sent the case back to the lower court to make a decision within 60 days whether “any parts of those transcripts meet the requirements for a seal.”
The lawsuit was a class action lawsuit accusing CoreCivic — at the time Corrections Corporation of America — of securities fraud. It was settled in November 2021, and at that point, hundreds of documents were still under the seal.
The Banner got involved in November 2023, asking the judge to unseal everything. Trauger unsealed just what CoreCivic and the Bureau of Prisons did not oppose, the appeals court judges wrote in their ruling.
The Banner was represented by Daniel Horwitz at the lower court and by Wendy Liu of Public Citizen, a public interest law firm, at the appeals court.
Have questions about the justice system? Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him with questions, tips or story ideas at emealins@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: TN judge kept CoreCivic docs sealed without good reason, court rules