Grae v. Corrections Corporation of America

Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit

Date Filed: July 15, 2022

Update: On Jan. 13, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Eddie Tardy, who replaced Marie Newby as an intervenor seeking to unseal records in the case, did not have standing to seek unsealing because he hadn’t suffered any adverse effects from the denial of documents. The court did not reach the substantive issues addressed in the Reporters Committee’s friend-of-the-court brief. 

Background: In 2016, investors in CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) filed a class action lawsuit against the private prison contractor. They alleged that CoreCivic had misrepresented both its poor track record in prisoner safety and the extent to which that record would affect CoreCivic’s future business with the federal Bureau of Prisons. While the case was being litigated, a federal district court sealed many of the records filed by the parties.

After CoreCivic reached a $56 million settlement with the plaintiff class in 2021, Marie Newby, whose son had died in a Tennessee prison operated by the company, sought to unseal records filed in the class action case. (Newby is a plaintiff in a separate lawsuit against CoreCivic.) The district court largely denied Newby’s motion to make the records public. She then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Our Position: The Sixth Circuit should vacate the district court’s order for continued sealing.

• The press and public have a presumptive right of access to judicial records.
• When a district court seals judicial records, it must set forth specific findings demonstrating that sealing is necessitated by — and narrowly tailored to — a compelling interest in nondisclosure.
• The district court did not specifically set forth its reasons for sealing the records at issue or for denying Newby’s motion to unseal them.
• To the extent the district court treated Newby’s motion to unseal as a motion for reconsideration of interlocutory orders, it applied the wrong legal standard.
• The presumptive right of access is especially strong in this case.

Quote: “[T]his matter involves the federal government’s practice of contracting with private companies to house and administer the nation’s prison population — a topic of significant public interest and debate, and one that has received extensive news coverage. Reporting derived from access to the judicial records at issue in this case would therefore serve to increase public understanding of an issue of national importance: the operation of the penal system.”