FEDERAL COURTHOUSE, July 1 – In the
Southern District of New York and many other districts,
from Massachusetts to Maryland and beyond, sealing is
contested, argued, sometimes reversed. In the District of
Columbia, it just happens.
On July 1 US District Judge Carl J. Nichols
granted the government's motion to keep a document called
the Patton Declaration under seal in the forfeiture case
over the Motor Tanker Skipper Bearing, an oil tanker the
government says is part of Iran's sanctions-evading "ghost
fleet."
The motion for leave to file it under seal
had been sitting on the docket since March 26. No public
notice went out when it was filed. No public comment
period ran before it was decided. On July 1, Judge Nichols
simply granted it, ordering the declaration kept from
public view until the court-ordered sale of the tanker is
complete.
That is how sealing works in DDC: a motion
goes in, sometimes marked sealed itself so the public
cannot even see that sealing is being sought, and a judge
rules whenever a judge gets to it. In the Skipper Bearing
case that meant a three-month wait and then a seal, with
no public docketed explanation beyond the one line that it
is tied to the sale process.
Contrast the District of Colorado. Under D.
Colo. Local Rule 47.1(d), when a party moves to restrict a
document from public access, notice of that motion is
posted to the court's public website the next business
day. Any person, not just a party, then has three court
business days to file an objection. The rule states
explicitly that absent exigent circumstances, no ruling on
a motion to restrict is to be made until the objection
period has run – and that even if no one objects, the
court is not to grant restriction automatically. The
public gets a defined window to be heard before the door
closes, not after. This is not theoretical.
Inner City Press has used the Colorado
process, twice, in recent weeks. In Jones v. United
Airlines, 1:24-cv-03013 (D. Colo.), United Airlines and
then the plaintiff separately moved to restrict
summary-judgment exhibits, including several deposition
transcripts, as "unopposed." Inner City Press filed
objections under the local rule. Magistrate Judge N. Reid
Neureiter initially granted the airline's motion anyway –
then, after a June 24 hearing at which this reporter
appeared by video and argued, reconsidered his own prior
order, sustained Inner City Press's objections, and denied
both restriction motions outright, ordering the parties to
file redacted-but-public versions by July 17.
A second challenge is now pending in
Preciado v. RugsUSA, LLC, 1:25-cv-01243 (D. Colo.), a
consumer class action where Inner City Press moved on June
29 to intervene for the limited purpose of opposing
restriction of expert-witness materials tied to a damages
fight; that motion is now before Magistrate Judge Kathryn
A. Starnella, undecided as of this writing. Win or lose on
the merits, the point is structural: Colorado's rule gives
a non-party press outlet standing, notice and a hearing
before sealing becomes final. DDC gives none of the
three.
DDC has nothing like it.
Which brings us to United States v.
Al-Marimi, 1:22-cr-00392, the case against Abu Agila
Mohammad Mas'ud Kheir Al-Marimi, accused of building the
bomb that brought down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie in
1988, killing 270 people. As that case moved toward trial
this spring, sealed attachments and a partially redacted
government filing went onto the docket with no public
sealing order explaining why. Inner City Press wrote to
the judge's chambers about it on May 27. The docket's
answer, we are told, was that the court does not accept
letters.
So on June 4, Inner City Press and its
reporter filed a formal motion in a new miscellaneous
case, paying the $52 filing fee, seeking unsealing of
docket entries 468 and 475 and a public accounting of what
was redacted from entry 477. The case was assigned to
Judge Dabney L. Friedrich as 1:26-mc-00089. On June 14 –
ten days later, with the case's own urgency argued around
imminent hearings and a June 12 status report deadline
that had by then already passed – Judge Friedrich's order
was not to unseal anything, and not to rule on the merits,
but to direct that the motion first be served on the
parties in the underlying criminal case. Proof of service,
a certificate, was filed June 17.
Since then: nothing. Compare the two
systems side by side and the difference is not academic.
In Colorado a member of the public who wants to seal a
filing has to tell the public it is asking, and the public
has three days to say why not, before any ruling comes
down. In DDC, sealing can happen without a public motion
being visible at all, and a journalist seeking to unseal –
after being told the court does not read letters – must
pay a filing fee, wait for a docket assignment, then wait
again to be told to serve papers on parties in a criminal
case who did not ask to be sued, before the substance of
the request is even reached. Inner City Press has
separately written to DDC Chief Judge James Boasberg and
to Magistrate Judge Faruqui since December 2025 asking how
the press and public are supposed to raise sealing issues
in this district in the first place, including in the
district's "-sz-" seizure-case docket line, without a
substantive response. And so, a new approach. Watch this
site.
The still-sealed Judge Friedrich case is IN
RE: SEALED AND REDACTED FILINGS IN UNITED STATES V.
AL-MARIMI, 1:22-cr-00392 (DLF), and Inner Cit Press'
1:26-mc-00089 (D.D.C.).
The tanker case is United States v. Motor
Tanker Skipper Bearing, 1:26-cv-00697 (CJN).
