Pompey v. County Of Westchester

FILIPPATES PLAC Employment Law, Litigation & ADR Tanvir H. Rahman Phone/Fax: 914-984-1111 Admitted in NY & NJ 199 Main Street, Suite 800 trahman@filippatoslaw.com White Plains, NY 10601 filippatoslaw.com * bestworkplacelawyers.com February 7, 2025 VIA ECF The Hon. Kenneth M. Karas United States District Court for the Southern District of New York 300 Quarropas Street White Plains, New York 10601 Re: Pompey vy. County of Westchester, et al., 23-CV-9337 (KMK) (JM) Dear Judge Karas: On behalf of Plaintiff Chevor Pompey, we write in response to Defendants’ February 5, 2025, request to file certain exhibits in their anticipated motion for summary judgment under seal. Dkt. No. 46. First, as we expressed to counsel for Defendants prior to their filing of the February 5, 2025, request, Plaintiff has no objection to filing the following proposed exhibits under seal: Exhibits K; M-V; X-Z; AA; BB; and CC. Plaintiff does, however, object to the filing of proposed Exhibits J (“December 8, 2020, memo regarding promotion recommendations”), S (“December 3, 2021, memo regarding promotion recommendations”), and W (“November 18, 2022 memo regarding promotion recommendations”) under seal. At its heart, this is failure to promote case in which Plaintiff alleges that he was repeatedly passed over by the Westchester County Law Department’s Family Court Bureau for promotions in favor of white or Hispanic, predominantly female, peers, including those whom he trained and who joined the Law Department well after he did. Respectfully, rather than seal these critical promotion memos which set forth the purported reasons why certain individuals were promoted over Plaintiff, and which Defendants admit contain “information [that] is directly relevant to Defendants’ motion” (Dkt. No. 46 at 2), the names of non-parties should instead be redacted consistent with the strong presumption that documents material to an adjudication are accessible to the public. See Lugosch v. Pyramid Co., 435 F.3d 110, 123 (2d Cir. 2006) (documents submitted in connection with motions for summary judgment entitled to “the highest” presumption of access and should not be sealed “absent the most compelling reasons”); Lytle v. JPMorgan Ne RAI Ne Fe ON ee NOTE NN Uwe bet I NE REE Et EU ll eS Faw ws weet wt eee 1 eC Chase, 810 F. Supp. 2d 616, 632 (S.D.N.Y. 2011) (unsealing all documents in support of or in opposition to defendant’s motion for summary judgment in their entirety, except for documents which contained personal information, which were redacted). We thank Your Honor for the Court’s attention to this matter. Respectfully submitted, Tanvir H. Rahman ce: All Counsel of Record (via ECF) Given consent of Plaintiff and the reasons proffered by Defendants, the Court grants the application to seal Exhibits K; M-V; X-Z; AA; BB; and CC. However, the Court agrees Plaintiff that Exhibits should be redacted to only bar public filing of the names of the non-parties identified in Exhibits J, S, and W. g i 2/12/25