Doe v. Does
The Reporters Committee filed an amicus brief in Doe v. Does, a mostly-sealed defamation case in the Northern District of Illinois. The brief supports a renewed motion to intervene by UCLA law school professor Eugene Volokh, who sought to unseal court records in the case. The district court denied Volokh’s motion to intervene without prejudice because it found his motion was not timely. The Reporters Committee’s brief argues that journalists and other members of the public may not move to unseal immediately when they learn of sealed cases for a variety of reasons, and a strict timeliness requirement to intervene is contrary to the public’s First Amendment and common law rights of access to judicial records.