The court issued a limited remand for the district court to evaluate the sealing orders under the proper legal standard within 30 days of the issuance of this opinion. The court concluded that the district court misapprehended the nature and extent of the public's right to judicial records on remand, the district court shall not seal or order redaction of any publicly available documents or information the district court also used the wrong legal standard for sealing documents and the district court erred by failing to evaluate all of the documents individually. The sealed or redacted documents include a transcript of proceedings held in open court, a famous Pennsylvania grand jury report that is available as a book on and that was adapted as a motion picture, an arrest report from a police department's public website, articles from The New York Times and Rolling Stone, and an obituary from a public website. The Fifth Circuit held that the district court erred in sealing and ordering redaction of voluminous documents related to litigation challenging Louisiana's abortion laws without a proper legal basis, and therefore vacated the district court's sealing orders. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings. Finally, the court vacated the ruling that Vikas breached the settlement, concluding that the district judge ignored key provisions of the settlement and failed to support his judgment with relevant record evidence.

The court also vacated the sanctions order based on either lack of subject matter jurisdiction or an abuse of discretion standard. This case concerns three orders purporting to enforce a settlement between the parties in a commercial dispute: (1) an order declaring that Vikas breached the settlement (2) an order striking Vikas's pleadings as a sanction and (3) a summary judgment that Vikas had procured the settlement by fraud, causing $40 million in damages.The Fifth Circuit concluded that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction to issue the summary judgment for fraud and thus the court vacated the order and denied as moot Vikas's related appeals.

Fifth circuit court of appeals opinions