In late June the federal Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals—whose rulings are binding on federal trial courts in South Carolina—and the South Carolina Supreme Court both took actions independently to provide for some openness of proceedings that were previously closed or obscured from the press and public: immigration proceedings in the Fourth Circuit ruling and state judicial disciplinary proceedings in the South Carolina action.
The Fourth Circuit’s brief order, issued on June 26, granted a motion to remove restrictions on digital access to the online court file of a case brought by Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, who was detained for two months for allegedly spreading Hamas propaganda. He was released after a federal judge held that his detention violated the First and Fifth Amendments. Suri’s deportation has been stayed, and was affirmed by the appeals court.
The federal courts’ PACER system normally provides online access to all documents in federal criminal and civil court cases, including motions, briefs and court rulings. But many records for Suri’s case were not available, under a federal court rule that allows limiting the public’s remote electronic access only to “the docket maintained by the court” and “an opinion, order, judgment, or other disposition of the court” in a “proceeding relating to . . . immigration benefits or detention.” In other words, the entire case docket listing all the filings was available online, but only documents created and filed by the court itself were available. Other materials, including filings by Suri and the government, were only listed and could not be accessed online; they were available only in physical form, at the court clerk’s office in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals courthouse annex in Richmond, Virginia.
The online news organization The Intercept, represented by attorneys with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (my one-time employer), intervened in the government’s deportation case against Suri and sought to make the case materials available electronically. The government did not object to the request, and the appeals court granted it.
This may seem a minor victory. But digital availability of materials in court cases—particularly deportation and other cases brought by the government—are important in monitoring court proceedings and keeping the government and the courts accountable to the public that they serve and to whom they answer. Read more