Leigh Ann Youngblood-West v. Aflac Incorporated, et al.

The District Court below enforced private hush agreements with a permanent injunction sealing Petitioner Leigh Ann Youngblood-West’s civil RICO complaint and restraining her from revealing evidence of a long-running cover-up by Aflac Incorporated and its CEO Dan Amos of multiple assaults committed by Aflac’s thenChief Medical Director Dr. Amos upon his sedated patients, Aflac’s employees or their spouses like Youngblood-West. The Eleventh Circuit upheld the injunction without considering the public’s First Amendment interest in hearing her story with its significant public implications, in disregard of the balancing test articulated by this Court in Newton v. Rumery, 480 U.S. 386 (l987), in conflict with the Fourth Circuit’s contemporaneous opinion in Overbey v. Mayor & City Council of Baltimore, No. 17- 2444 (4th Cir. Jul. 11, 2019), and out of step with other Circuits that have applied Rumery to invalidate contractual waivers of constitutional rights. The Eleventh Circuit also upheld the District Judge’s refusal to recuse himself despite his spouse’s being an intended beneficiary of the hush agreement and a then-member of the law firm that had executed the cover-up; the Judge’s own familial and “Fish House Gang” connections to each of the five RICO defendants; his adherence to the long-abolished “duty to sit”; and his Star Chamber conduct of the proceedings. 1. Whether the injunction enforcing the hush agreements and sealing the evidence of Aflac’s and Dan Amos’ cover-up of Dr. Amos’ serial assaults upon women, upheld by the Eleventh Circuit without the balancing test required by Rumery, violates the First Amendment?