Richard Roe v. United States, et al.

In May 2012, by interlocutory petition from the same docket below, petitioner sought certiorari here in a case concerning the court-ordered concealment of Donald Trump’s partner Felix Sater’s involvement in Russian organized crime. By order of the Second Circuit, he tried to file here entirely under seal, but this Court ordered him to move to seal and to propose versions of the petition and the motion, redacted by rules it gave him, for public access. He did, serving them on respondents, who didn’t object; and on review this Court, finding the redactions met with its rules, ordered both public here. In the years since, though retired from access here as they predate e-filing, the redacted motion and petition became and remain publicly available at the Library of Congress and the National Archive, and the redacted petition is also on Westlaw. Yet in 2018 the Second Circuit ordered both, which had been filed on its docket, redacted beyond what this Court approved and ordered public. Should this Court, using supervisory power, summarily reverse, ordering that court to remove its extra redactions?

The Second Circuit justified its refusal to limit itself to this Court’s redactions by holding inter alia that because the redaction process here is delegated to or supervised in part by clerks its determinations are not legally binding on lower courts. Is that correct?

Where judicial records are publicly docketed and widely available, a fortiori at higher courts, but in any