Thanks to friend of the blog, Jack Sargent, for pointing me to this fascinating dispute before the U.S Supreme Court now concerning the sealing of a record in an employment discrimination case.

From the reporters committee for freedom of the press blog:

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today filed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a decision that allowed all records in a federal employment discrimination case to be hidden from the public. The Reporters Committee filed the brief on behalf of itself and 29 other leading media organizations.

The friend-of-the-court brief was filed in support of The Legal Intelligencer, which petitioned the Supreme Court for review after the Third Circuit Court of Appeals rejected its request to intervene in Doe v. C.A.R.S. Protection Plus Inc. The newspaper sought to unseal the docket and record in Doe, a case in which the plaintiff claimed she was wrongly fired because she had an abortion.

“This case has been conducted for seven years in complete secrecy,” the brief noted, “a testament to the need for the Court’s guidance regarding the right of access to civil hearings and records.” The brief urged the Court to accept review to correct the mistakes below and “clarify that the public has a constitutional right of access to civil proceedings and records, because civil proceedings implicate precisely the same concerns about the fairness of the justice system that underlie the right of access to criminal proceedings.”

The brief of the RCFP can be found here.

I would be very interested in hearing from others in the employment discrimination law community as to their sense as to when legal proceedings of this nature should be protected from public viewing.  One question that I have: are some of the sexual harassment cases out there any less humiliating and embarrassing than one concerning an employee who was fired because she allegedly had an abortion?

Another thought: do the public purposes of Title VII to eradicate employment discrimination in the American workforce, which I have written about here, become undermined when their is a lack of transparency when the record is sealed?  Finally, given the sensitive nature of these cases, where is one to draw the line?

Cross posted at Workplace Prof Blog.