11 ms·

Judge Orders Los Angeles Times to Delete Part of Published Article

Bizarro 8y ago
Stifling the first amendment is serious business. When are judges going to be held accountable for their wrong actions?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- danso 8y ago
  IIRC, federal judges can be removed by impeachment. Very unlikely that this judge or any other would be impeached just for a controversial ruling, though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Tenure_and_salary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#...
  - throw_away2 8y ago
    Not a federal judge and not an impeachment, but a judge has been removed for a controversial ruling recently: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/06/judge-aaron-persky-who-gave-brock-turners-lenient-sentence-sanford-rape-case-recalled/674551002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/06/judge-aaron-p...
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    Approximately 8 federal judges have been impeached in the last century: https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judges https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judg... That doesn't include how many resigned facing likely impeachment.
  - HelloNurse 8y ago
    It isn't merely a controversial ruling, it might be easily construed as a favor to friends (police and/or the clerks who published the document by mistake).
- ajross 8y ago
  When the filing is made before the appelate court. That's the way the system works.
  - gpm 8y ago
    That doesn't hold them accountable. Just stops their action from causing further harm.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  I'm not sure that trying to prevent publication of something that was filed under seal is a "wrong action" by a judge...
  - hedora 8y ago
    It is an incorrect ruling, since it directly contradicts precedent. This sort of thing often slows down promotions into higher courts (as it should — lower courts should not routinely waste everyone’s time and money with rulings that will surely be overturned on appeal).
  - astura 8y ago
    It's incorrect from a legal perspective. Judges are required to act within the legal framework.
- GavinMcG 8y ago
  Their wrong actions? What wrong actions? The judge did their job: they considered the facts and the law, and applied their legal reasoning, and reached a conclusion. The fact that you don't like the conclusion doesn't mean the judge acted wrongly. There's nothing to be held accountable for. The reasoning or decision itself, on the other hand, will go through the processes of review that almost all judicial decisions go through.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
1996 8y ago
Regardless of their reasons, it feels very wrong to think a judge or an elected official could even think about regulating free speach. Double wrong for doing to the press. I hope the judge get removed from office. I don't want people like that in charge of justice.
- pvg 8y ago
  Regardless of their reasons It's their actual job.
- Waterluvian 8y ago
  I was thinking it would turn out to be one of those bizarre elected judges that the US has. But I think federal judges are all appointed through some resemblance of a sensible process, so I'm at a loss as well.
  - refoundglory 8y ago
    Trump gets to appoint them these days.
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    This judge was nominated by G W Bush. Conservatives seem to be staunchly against the press except their version of it.
- latch 8y ago
  I know this isn't related to hate speech, it was done to protect someone's family, but in much of the world, various forms of speech are regulated (by judges or elected officials). To me, anyways, there's overwhelming anecdotal proof that having some limits on speech correlates (and more than likely contributes) to a safer and more just society without any virulent side effect. This is not a slippery slope. I think it's good to be vigilant about these things and scrutinize judges and officials though.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Personally I am highly suspicious of the 'for the subject's family' motivation as it seems very selectively applied and often comes up only when 'their people' are at risk from their own wrongdoing. I'm of the view that it should be for everybody or nobody and not to discretion because their discretion always leads to selfish behavior that holds the people who most need to be held accountable to be the least so.
kuon 8y ago
This kind of things often ends up in a Streisand effect, seems very clumsy.
anothergoogler 8y ago
Here's the article before it was edited: https://web.archive.org/web/20180714180330/http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-glendale-detective-guilty-plea-20180714-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180714180330/http://www.latime...
- jessaustin 8y ago
  John Saro Balian, 45, pleaded guilty to one count each of soliciting a bribe, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators as part of a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors. The document was ordered to be filed under seal but appeared on PACER, a public online database for court documents. I'd say that last part is the part that got LAT in trouble... I rarely support the whole "under seal" thing, especially when it's in order to protect a corrupt dirtbag cop, but this "ask for forgiveness not permission" stuff won't fly with many judges... But yeah, this guy is scum. Not only has he gleefully profited from both sides of the ruinous Drug War, but his police status has allowed him to escape the draconian punishments that normal people suffer.
  - forapurpose 8y ago
    > "ask for forgiveness not permission" stuff won't fly with many judges... According to the article, the courts have steadfastly protected this behavior for 90 years.
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      The paragraph before that mentions that it is often appeals courts who have protected the behavior, as various trial "...Judges have issued similar orders before..." Incidentally, no one would wish to see the cop's family harmed, but it's not like this plea agreement came as a surprise to them, so they already had time to reorganize their lives for security. That makes the seal difficult to justify. Also, the risks they face are mostly due to the cop's actions.
      - forapurpose 8y ago
pasbesoin 8y ago
Perhaps the judge should look instead to the court's and clerk's own record management. Something that is obviously in error, and the original cause of the risk. Of course, they may well seek to quash such publicity. After all, who's going to make a deal with a system so incompetent it can't keep a sealed record safe from its own negligent mis-handling?
pseingatl 8y ago
Wikileaks gets raked over the coals for (allegedly) printing similar information and the LA Times gets a pass. I believe it was in the Noriega case where the first order to CNN not to publish was made. It was overturned by the 11th Circuit.
- ars 8y ago
  > and the LA Times gets a pass Hu? The LA Times took it down. How is that "gets a pass"? The LA Times also acquired the information lawfully, Wikileaks did not.
  - hedora 8y ago
    The people at the LA times that published the information haven’t been forced to choose between exile in an embassy, and facing a kangaroo court, and also well-documented persecution via probably illegal psy-ops, falsified slanderous/libelous communications “from” trusted colleagues, etc, etc. Compared to wikileaks, they “got a pass”. It doesn’t make the mistreatment of the LA Times any better though.
    - ars 8y ago
      Because they obeyed the court order and took it down, so obviously they didn't have to do any of that. I really don't understand what you are expecting. If you disobey a court, you get punished. Why is that strange? And the exile in an embassy thing was unrelated to any leaks, despite Assange desperately trying to make it as if it was. Look, I supported Wikileaks goals at first, but then Assange tried to turn it into his personal PR firm, using the name "wiki" to try to make it as if it's some "for the public thing".
wcunning 8y ago
Eugene Volokh discussed this case earlier today on his blog [0]. His rough conclusion, with appropriate caselaw citations, was that the 9th circuit will almost certainly overturn the injunction on the article. http://reason.com/volokh/2018/07/15/judge-orders-la-times-to-alter-story-abo http://reason.com/volokh/2018/07/15/judge-orders-la-times-to...
yadaeno 8y ago
The times wrote about a confidential document that was mistakenly released to the pulblic. The judge who sealed the document in the first ordered the times to redact their article which goes against decades of case law and arguably the first amendment. Not only this but the Streisand effect seems to suggest that the court order will have the opposite than intended effect
- hkai 8y ago
  I agree that rare, isolated incidents like this one will have the Streisand effect. However, once this practice becomes routine, it will no longer be the case.
  - king_nothing 8y ago
    Yes and arbitrary state censorship via prior restraint is knocking on our doors right now. If this isn’t throughly thrown out with prejudice, things will only get much, much worse.
djsumdog 8y ago
There is a lot of crossover here and the Right to be Forgotten. The EFF opposed EU right to be forgotten laws because they could often be used in censorship (like in this very matter). In the US, there are fewer people who expunge criminal records because there are companies that will produced expunged records in background checks so long as they were public at any time. Banning this gets into 1st amendment grounds. And that's the flip side: labeling theory. In places like Australia, certain crimes do get removed from your record so long as you've stayed out of the system for five years. Even their sex offender registry has limited use (certain jobs, housing restrictions etc.); it's not public like ours. Then again, they don't have freedom of speech (except in Victoria; sorta). Could we have laws that restrict companies from considering criminal records past x number of years in the US? I'm not sure if that'd be possible in our currently legal system. In America, you can't really restrict information, once it's published, except in certain limited cases (like when a case involves a minor).
- omeid2 8y ago
  > they don't have freedom of speech I think the issue of freedom of speech is much more nuanced than that. For example, even in places with "absolute freedom of speech", which I suspect is what you're implying, there is defamation laws that forbids certain kind of speech. There is also laws around hate speech and so forth.
  - dgellow 8y ago
    > There is also laws around hate speech and so forth. Not in the US (as far as I understand). See the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... > In June 2017, the Supreme Court affirmed in a unanimous decision on Matal v. Tam that the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act violates the First Amendment's free speech clause. The issue was about government prohibiting the registration of trademarks that are "racially disparaging". Justice Samuel Alito writes: > “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express "the thought that we hate". United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U. S. 644, 655 (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting).”
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
Anyone have copies of the decision?
nickthemagicman 8y ago
The courts have been stacked by conservatives for decades. This judge was nominated by G W Bush. Conservatives seem to be staunchly against the press except their version of it.
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  I just do not understand wild caricatures like this. Edit: spelling. TIL it's not spelled "characature".
  - nickthemagicman 8y ago
    How can you have every major conservative figure in politics having an outright attack on the press from the president on down...and call it a wild caricature I'll never understand. Maybe it's fake news from conservatives themselves about the fake news?
king_nothing 8y ago
There’s already manufactured consent and corruption of civilizational-implosion proportions, but this is a shot across the bow that the day of the fourth estate independent press maybe numbered.
billpg 8y ago
I look forward to hearing how blockchain technology could have prevented this.
- thinkmassive 8y ago
  Well the info could be hosted on IPFS, which eventually could be monetized by something like Filecoin. I suspect you’re trolling, but decentralized technologies certainly will play a part in publicly disseminating information in the future.
- sangnoir 8y ago
  Due to high transaction volumes (50 articles/day), the offending article would still be waiting to be published / mined. Thus obviating the need to be redacted.
M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
> LA Times Zero sympathy for them having been rangebanned from their site.
newswriter99 8y ago
It sounds like the reporter found it on PACER. https://www.pacer.gov/ https://www.pacer.gov/ It's an extremely useful resource for information gathering.

Stifling the first amendment is serious business. When are judges going to be held accountable for their wrong actions?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
danso 8y ago
IIRC, federal judges can be removed by impeachment. Very unlikely that this judge or any other would be impeached just for a controversial ruling, though: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#Tenure_and_salary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_judge#...
- throw_away2 8y ago
  Not a federal judge and not an impeachment, but a judge has been removed for a controversial ruling recently: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/06/judge-aaron-persky-who-gave-brock-turners-lenient-sentence-sanford-rape-case-recalled/674551002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/06/06/judge-aaron-p...
- forapurpose 8y ago
  Approximately 8 federal judges have been impeached in the last century: https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judges https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/impeachments-federal-judg... That doesn't include how many resigned facing likely impeachment.
- HelloNurse 8y ago
  It isn't merely a controversial ruling, it might be easily construed as a favor to friends (police and/or the clerks who published the document by mistake).
ajross 8y ago
When the filing is made before the appelate court. That's the way the system works.
- gpm 8y ago
  That doesn't hold them accountable. Just stops their action from causing further harm.
AnimalMuppet 8y ago
I'm not sure that trying to prevent publication of something that was filed under seal is a "wrong action" by a judge...
- hedora 8y ago
  It is an incorrect ruling, since it directly contradicts precedent. This sort of thing often slows down promotions into higher courts (as it should — lower courts should not routinely waste everyone’s time and money with rulings that will surely be overturned on appeal).
- astura 8y ago
  It's incorrect from a legal perspective. Judges are required to act within the legal framework.
GavinMcG 8y ago
Their wrong actions? What wrong actions? The judge did their job: they considered the facts and the law, and applied their legal reasoning, and reached a conclusion. The fact that you don't like the conclusion doesn't mean the judge acted wrongly. There's nothing to be held accountable for. The reasoning or decision itself, on the other hand, will go through the processes of review that almost all judicial decisions go through.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

1996 8y ago

Regardless of their reasons, it feels very wrong to think a judge or an elected official could even think about regulating free speach. Double wrong for doing to the press. I hope the judge get removed from office. I don't want people like that in charge of justice.

pvg 8y ago
Regardless of their reasons It's their actual job.
Waterluvian 8y ago
I was thinking it would turn out to be one of those bizarre elected judges that the US has. But I think federal judges are all appointed through some resemblance of a sensible process, so I'm at a loss as well.
- refoundglory 8y ago
  Trump gets to appoint them these days.
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  This judge was nominated by G W Bush. Conservatives seem to be staunchly against the press except their version of it.
latch 8y ago
I know this isn't related to hate speech, it was done to protect someone's family, but in much of the world, various forms of speech are regulated (by judges or elected officials). To me, anyways, there's overwhelming anecdotal proof that having some limits on speech correlates (and more than likely contributes) to a safer and more just society without any virulent side effect. This is not a slippery slope. I think it's good to be vigilant about these things and scrutinize judges and officials though.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Personally I am highly suspicious of the 'for the subject's family' motivation as it seems very selectively applied and often comes up only when 'their people' are at risk from their own wrongdoing. I'm of the view that it should be for everybody or nobody and not to discretion because their discretion always leads to selfish behavior that holds the people who most need to be held accountable to be the least so.

kuon 8y ago

This kind of things often ends up in a Streisand effect, seems very clumsy.

anothergoogler 8y ago

Here's the article before it was edited: https://web.archive.org/web/20180714180330/http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-glendale-detective-guilty-plea-20180714-story.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180714180330/http://www.latime...

jessaustin 8y ago
John Saro Balian, 45, pleaded guilty to one count each of soliciting a bribe, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators as part of a plea agreement he reached with prosecutors. The document was ordered to be filed under seal but appeared on PACER, a public online database for court documents. I'd say that last part is the part that got LAT in trouble... I rarely support the whole "under seal" thing, especially when it's in order to protect a corrupt dirtbag cop, but this "ask for forgiveness not permission" stuff won't fly with many judges... But yeah, this guy is scum. Not only has he gleefully profited from both sides of the ruinous Drug War, but his police status has allowed him to escape the draconian punishments that normal people suffer.
- forapurpose 8y ago
  > "ask for forgiveness not permission" stuff won't fly with many judges... According to the article, the courts have steadfastly protected this behavior for 90 years.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    The paragraph before that mentions that it is often appeals courts who have protected the behavior, as various trial "...Judges have issued similar orders before..." Incidentally, no one would wish to see the cop's family harmed, but it's not like this plea agreement came as a surprise to them, so they already had time to reorganize their lives for security. That makes the seal difficult to justify. Also, the risks they face are mostly due to the cop's actions.
    - forapurpose 8y ago

pasbesoin 8y ago

Perhaps the judge should look instead to the court's and clerk's own record management. Something that is obviously in error, and the original cause of the risk. Of course, they may well seek to quash such publicity. After all, who's going to make a deal with a system so incompetent it can't keep a sealed record safe from its own negligent mis-handling?

pseingatl 8y ago

Wikileaks gets raked over the coals for (allegedly) printing similar information and the LA Times gets a pass. I believe it was in the Noriega case where the first order to CNN not to publish was made. It was overturned by the 11th Circuit.

ars 8y ago
> and the LA Times gets a pass Hu? The LA Times took it down. How is that "gets a pass"? The LA Times also acquired the information lawfully, Wikileaks did not.
- hedora 8y ago
  The people at the LA times that published the information haven’t been forced to choose between exile in an embassy, and facing a kangaroo court, and also well-documented persecution via probably illegal psy-ops, falsified slanderous/libelous communications “from” trusted colleagues, etc, etc. Compared to wikileaks, they “got a pass”. It doesn’t make the mistreatment of the LA Times any better though.
  - ars 8y ago
    Because they obeyed the court order and took it down, so obviously they didn't have to do any of that. I really don't understand what you are expecting. If you disobey a court, you get punished. Why is that strange? And the exile in an embassy thing was unrelated to any leaks, despite Assange desperately trying to make it as if it was. Look, I supported Wikileaks goals at first, but then Assange tried to turn it into his personal PR firm, using the name "wiki" to try to make it as if it's some "for the public thing".

wcunning 8y ago

Eugene Volokh discussed this case earlier today on his blog [0]. His rough conclusion, with appropriate caselaw citations, was that the 9th circuit will almost certainly overturn the injunction on the article. http://reason.com/volokh/2018/07/15/judge-orders-la-times-to-alter-story-abo http://reason.com/volokh/2018/07/15/judge-orders-la-times-to...

yadaeno 8y ago

The times wrote about a confidential document that was mistakenly released to the pulblic. The judge who sealed the document in the first ordered the times to redact their article which goes against decades of case law and arguably the first amendment. Not only this but the Streisand effect seems to suggest that the court order will have the opposite than intended effect

hkai 8y ago
I agree that rare, isolated incidents like this one will have the Streisand effect. However, once this practice becomes routine, it will no longer be the case.
- king_nothing 8y ago
  Yes and arbitrary state censorship via prior restraint is knocking on our doors right now. If this isn’t throughly thrown out with prejudice, things will only get much, much worse.

djsumdog 8y ago

There is a lot of crossover here and the Right to be Forgotten. The EFF opposed EU right to be forgotten laws because they could often be used in censorship (like in this very matter). In the US, there are fewer people who expunge criminal records because there are companies that will produced expunged records in background checks so long as they were public at any time. Banning this gets into 1st amendment grounds. And that's the flip side: labeling theory. In places like Australia, certain crimes do get removed from your record so long as you've stayed out of the system for five years. Even their sex offender registry has limited use (certain jobs, housing restrictions etc.); it's not public like ours. Then again, they don't have freedom of speech (except in Victoria; sorta). Could we have laws that restrict companies from considering criminal records past x number of years in the US? I'm not sure if that'd be possible in our currently legal system. In America, you can't really restrict information, once it's published, except in certain limited cases (like when a case involves a minor).

omeid2 8y ago
> they don't have freedom of speech I think the issue of freedom of speech is much more nuanced than that. For example, even in places with "absolute freedom of speech", which I suspect is what you're implying, there is defamation laws that forbids certain kind of speech. There is also laws around hate speech and so forth.
- dgellow 8y ago
  > There is also laws around hate speech and so forth. Not in the US (as far as I understand). See the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_in_the_United_Stat... > In June 2017, the Supreme Court affirmed in a unanimous decision on Matal v. Tam that the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act violates the First Amendment's free speech clause. The issue was about government prohibiting the registration of trademarks that are "racially disparaging". Justice Samuel Alito writes: > “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express "the thought that we hate". United States v. Schwimmer, 279 U. S. 644, 655 (1929) (Holmes, J., dissenting).”

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

Anyone have copies of the decision?

nickthemagicman 8y ago

The courts have been stacked by conservatives for decades. This judge was nominated by G W Bush. Conservatives seem to be staunchly against the press except their version of it.

squirrelicus 8y ago
I just do not understand wild caricatures like this. Edit: spelling. TIL it's not spelled "characature".
- nickthemagicman 8y ago
  How can you have every major conservative figure in politics having an outright attack on the press from the president on down...and call it a wild caricature I'll never understand. Maybe it's fake news from conservatives themselves about the fake news?

king_nothing 8y ago

There’s already manufactured consent and corruption of civilizational-implosion proportions, but this is a shot across the bow that the day of the fourth estate independent press maybe numbered.

billpg 8y ago

I look forward to hearing how blockchain technology could have prevented this.

thinkmassive 8y ago
Well the info could be hosted on IPFS, which eventually could be monetized by something like Filecoin. I suspect you’re trolling, but decentralized technologies certainly will play a part in publicly disseminating information in the future.
sangnoir 8y ago
Due to high transaction volumes (50 articles/day), the offending article would still be waiting to be published / mined. Thus obviating the need to be redacted.

M_Bakhtiari 8y ago

> LA Times Zero sympathy for them having been rangebanned from their site.

newswriter99 8y ago

It sounds like the reporter found it on PACER. https://www.pacer.gov/ https://www.pacer.gov/ It's an extremely useful resource for information gathering.