Courthouse News Service v. Dorothy Brown, Clerk, Circuit Court of Illinois, Cook County

Petitioner, a news service that reports on civil litigation in the federal and state courts nationwide, sought timely access to public civil complaints filed in Cook County, Illinois. After the Clerk of the Court for Cook County declined to provide such access, Petitioner filed suit pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to redress this First Amendment harm. Creating an acknowledged and irreconcilable split with the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and also splitting with the Second Circuit, both of which have held that federal courts should not abstain from hearing First Amendment challenges seeking access to public court filings, the Seventh Circuit held that federal courts should abstain from hearing First Amendment claims of this type pursuant to Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971) and its progeny. The Seventh Circuit’s decision was grounded not in any clearly defined category of Younger cases in which this Court has stated abstention is appropriate, but rather in general principles of “equity, comity, and federalism.” The question presented is thus: Whether Younger and its progeny permit federal courts to abstain, on the basis of general principles of comity and federalism, from hearing First Amendment challenges that seek access to state court filings.