Ohio Constitution prohibits judges from sealing juvenile delinquency records without considering the public’s interest

By Dan Trevas
Court News Ohio

A state law mandating the blanket sealing of records in delinquency cases when a juvenile is not found delinquent violates the Ohio Constitution because it does not allow for any consideration of the public’s interest in access to the records, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled this week.

In a divided opinion, the Supreme Court ordered Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Kari Bloom to provide the Cincinnati Enquirer access to the transcript of a 2022 trial. The case involved a case in which the juvenile court found a juvenile to be not delinquent despite a police officer stating that he witnessed the juvenile standing over an assault victim and continuously firing a gun. Judge Bloom had denied the newspaper’s request to review the transcript, citing a state law that directed her to seal the records once she found the 13-year-old was not delinquent.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice R. Patrick DeWine stated the law violates the “open courts provision” of the Ohio Constitution. He explained that Judge Bloom argued the law is constitutional because juvenile proceedings are generally not open to the public, a position which drew its basis from two prior Ohio Supreme Court decisions. Justice DeWine explained that those prior decisions improperly held that the open courts provision provided no greater right to court access than the Free Speech and Free Press Clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The opinion maintained that the state open courts provision is distinctly different than the First Amendment, and the two should not be read in lockstep as if they protect the same rights. With this case, the Court majority announced a new approach to “lockstep precedent,” noting that the Court would revisit past precedent where it held that the Ohio Constitution had the same meaning as the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of a provision of the U.S. Constitutions without the Ohio Supreme Court having fully considered the text and history of an Ohio constitutional provision.

“In adopting the open courts provision, the voters who enacted our Constitution made the decision that the administration of justice is best done in the open. We are obligated to honor their decisions by holding true to the text of our Constitution,” he wrote.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justice Patrick F. Fischer joined Justice DeWine’s opinion. Third District Court of Appeals Judge Juergen Waldick, sitting for Justice Joseph T. Deters, also joined the opinion.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Michael P. Donnelly also found the mandatory sealing law to be unconstitutional, but disagreed with the majority opinion’s decision to overrule prior decisions to reach its conclusion. Justice Donnelly noted that Judge Bloom did not mention those prior decisions, let alone base any argument on them. Justice Donnelly maintained that the mandatory sealing law can be found unconstitutional by applying the reasoning in those cases rather than overruling them.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Melody Stewart wrote the Enquirer is not entitled to the records because Judge Bloom followed current state law when she sealed them. Justice Stewart stated the open courts provision is not absolute, citing other Ohio court proceedings that are closed to the public. She noted that no one argued for the interpretation the majority independently crafted and applied here.

Justice Jennifer Brunner joined Justice Stewart’s opinion.

In 2022, Judge Bloom presided over the delinquency trial of a minor identified in court records as “J.L.” According to a sworn affidavit from an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor, a Cincinnati police officer witnessed J.L. standing over an assault victim and firing a gun continuously into the victim’s face-down body.

Judge Bloom found J.L. was not delinquent and dismissed the felonious assault charge. Following R.C. 2151.356(B)(1)(d), the judge sealed the case records.

A few months later, J.L. was killed in a shooting. The Enquirer then requested the transcript of J.L.’s earlier delinquency trial. Citing the state law, Judge Bloom denied the request and refused to confirm whether the trial had even occurred.

The Enquirer sought a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court, asking it to direct the judge to provide the transcript, and a writ of prohibition, to prevent the judge from enforcing her order to seal the records. The Enquirer argued that R.C. 2151.356 violated the Ohio Constitution because it provides no requirement to balance the interests of the public against those of the juvenile.

Supreme Court Analyzed History of Open Courts Provision
Justice DeWine explained that the open courts provision can be traced to laws governing the colony of Pennsylvania before it became a state, and then later to the Pennsylvania constitutions adopted in 1776 and 1790. Kentucky’s 1792 and 1799 constitutions included a similar open courts provision.

When Ohio adopted its first constitution in 1802, it drew on many provisions from the 1799 Kentucky Constitution, including an open courts provision. The provision, which is in Article 1, Section 16 of the Ohio Constitution, has undergone little change. The right to open courts is part of Section 16 which states, “All courts shall be open, and every person, for an injury done him in his land, goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law, and shall have justice administered without denial or delay.”

The opinion stated the Supreme Court of Ohio has ruled access rights in the open courts provision are not “absolute,” but court proceedings are presumed to be open, and any attempt to close the courts by sealing records or limiting attendance must be balanced against the public’s interest.

Judge Bloom argued the right to access does not pertain to juvenile court proceedings, basing her argument on the Court’s 1990 In re T.R. decision and a subsequent 2000 decision. The opinion noted those cases relied on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which found that, historically, juvenile proceedings have not been open to the public and rejected arguments that the First Amendment gives the public access to juvenile proceedings. In T.R., the Court ruled the Ohio Constitution’s open courts provision has the same meaning as the Free Speech and Free Press guarantees of the First Amendment.

Today’s opinion stated that T.R. was wrongly decided and noted the text of the open courts provision is not similar to the Free Speech and Free Press Clauses in the federal Constitution. The opinion explained that T.R. did not provide any analysis to support the conclusion that the open courts provision does not provide any greater rights to court access than the First Amendment.

“It simply announced a result: a result that effectively read the open courts provision out of the Ohio Constitution,” the opinion stated.

State Constitution Applied to Juvenile Record Sealing Law
The Court noted the Enquirer did not argue that any federal constitutional rights entitled it to access the records, but only submitted that the open courts provision of the Ohio Constitution required a balancing test before a juvenile court could deny the records. The majority opinion explained that juvenile courts have existed in Ohio since 1902, and prior to creating juvenile courts, juveniles were tried in adult court under the same rules as adult proceedings, including being open to the public.

R.C. 2151.356, enacted in 2006, for the first time, directed a juvenile court to seal the records when a juvenile was determined not to be delinquent. The Court noted prior to the law, juveniles could request records to be sealed, and judges had the discretion to seal them. Because the Court today concluded the Ohio Constitution’s open courts provision does apply to juvenile delinquency proceedings, the records could not be sealed without an individualized balancing that considers the interests of the juvenile and the interests of the public.

When there is a constitutional right of access to a court proceeding, a court should use the same balancing test it uses for adult proceedings, the opinion noted. The Court ruled a proceeding or access to records can be limited only after a court makes a finding based on the facts of the case that the rights of the juvenile outweigh the public’s interest.

Because J.L. is deceased, there is no interest of the juvenile to weigh in this case, the Court explained. It directed Judge Bloom to provide the Enquirer with a copy of the transcript.

Current Precedent Sufficient to Decide Case, Concurrence Maintained
In his concurrence, Justice Donnelly asserted the majority opinion correctly ordered Judge Bloom to provide a copy of the transcript, but did so “through an analysis that no one asked for and with legal conclusions that are both erroneous and far broader than necessary” to decide the case.

Justice Donnelly noted the requests for media access to juvenile proceedings raised in T.R. and subsequent cases involved laws that allowed judges to deny access without giving any reason. In T.R. the Supreme Court added a balancing test to the law requiring juvenile judges to weigh the interest of a juvenile against the public’s interest in having access to juvenile records before closing the proceedings.

The concurrence noted the Enquirer never asked the Court to overrule T.R. or decide whether the rights guaranteed under the Ohio Constitution are greater than the rights of the press under the First Amendment. The newspaper only asked the Court to require the use of a balancing test, such as the one adopted in T.R., to decide the case. Creating a new rule to apply to all juvenile court proceedings is far beyond what was necessary to decide this case, and the majority failed to provide any history or case law that indicated the open court provision requires all juvenile proceedings to be presumptively open, the concurrence concluded.

General Assembly Determined Records Should be Sealed, Dissent Maintained
In her dissent, Justice Stewart wrote that the majority opinion went beyond the parties' arguments to independently announce a novel interpretation and application of the open courts provision with implications far beyond this case. Justice Stewart noted that the Enquirer did not argue that the case law on the open courts provision was wrongly decided.

The dissent stated that in the T.R. decision, the Court at the time found that the historical records of Ohio constitutional conventions provided almost no explanation of the provision’s meaning.

“The majority’s ability to divine such clarity from what it asserts is the text, history, and tradition (and, somehow, the values) of the open-courts provision is puzzling, because this court has already concluded that history offered us little help interpreting the provision,” Justice Stewart wrote.

The majority’s interpretation overlooked the traditional interests of confidentiality and rehabilitation that have been hallmarks of the juvenile justice system, the dissent stated.  Additionally, Justice Stewart wrote, the balancing test that the majority announced simply removed from the General Assembly the policy decision it already made to require the sealing of records when a juvenile is found not delinquent, subject to certain exceptions such as allowing law enforcement access. The Court has no role in making policy changes, the dissent concluded.

2022-1457. State ex rel. Cincinnati Enquirer v. Bloom, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5029.

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