S. Court enacts interim rules for sealing records: the opinion deals only with civil dockets, saying more study is necessary for criminal cases.

Saying the public's constitutional right of access to court records must remain inviolate, the Supreme Court enacted emergency interim rules standardizing procedures for sealing court records in civil cases.

The rules include a prohibition on making case and docket numbers confidential and require clerks to post notices after a record is sealed. The rules, drafted by the Bar's Rules of Judicial Administration Committee, also set out procedures for challenging the sealing of records. For now, the rules only apply to civil cases and the court has directed the appropriate committees to continue to study rules for sealing criminal cases and to determine whether similar procedures are needed to address requests to seal appellate court records.

The court acted April 5 in Case no. SC06-2136.

"This report addresses highly serious concerns first identified by Florida news media reports about hidden cases and secret dockets, sometimes called 'supersealing,'" the unanimous court said. "These reports identified practices that, however unintentional, were clearly offensive to the spirit of laws and rules that ultimately rest on Florida's well-established public policy of government in the sunshine."

The court said it is "fully committed to safeguarding this right."

Urgency to take action was ignited last summer by news reports in The Miami Herald of hiding files in secret dockets in Broward Circuit Court, as many as 400 civil cases, some about divorces and domestic violence involving judges, lawyers, police officers, politicians, and television personalities. Following that investigation, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported "all traces of 272 criminal cases dating back to 1988 vanished from citizens' view." Problems began cropping up in other circuits, too.

The court said the new rules identify a narrow category of court records where public access is automatically restricted by operation of state or federal law or court rule, such as in child dependency cases.

"Otherwise, our rules strongly disfavor court records that are hidden from public scrutiny," the court said. "The rules provide only a limited veil that is restricted to a second category of court records where a set of carefully defined interests are involved."

The court said the amendments to Rule 2.420 provide a procedural vehicle for making circuit and county court records in noncriminal cases confidential under Rule 2.420(c)(9) and for unsealing court records that have been made...