In this appeal from a now-settled defamation case brought by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the Second Circuit held that many of the documents under seal were properly treated as “judicial documents” to which a strong presumption of public access attached. The court reaffirmed that the status of a document as a judicial document is “fixed at filing” — meaning that if the filing was relevant to the court’s exercise of its Article III functions when filed, later events (e.g., the case being settled or the motion becoming moot) do not nullify the presumption of access. The court also clarified that a document does not lose the presumption of access simply because the court did not explicitly rely on it in rendering a decision, and that filings in connection with motions to seal or unseal are themselves judicial documents since they invoke the court’s supervisory power.

At the same time, the Second Circuit affirmed in part and vacated in part the district court’s orders. It agreed that the lower court did not err in declining to unseal certain documents — for example, segments of Maxwell’s deposition involving her adult sexual relationships and redacted identifying information of pseudonymized third-parties — because in those instances countervailing privacy interests outweighed the access presumption. But the appellate court vacated the district court’s categorical refusal to treat certain undecided motions as judicial documents subject to access, and remanded for further individual review of those materials (including a Florida deposition transcript and filings by non-parties) consistent with the correct standard.



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