Dockets, filings, and court records
Redaction
Redaction is blacking out protected information in a filing so the rest of the document can stay public.
Federal rules require filers to redact a short list of sensitive items before anything reaches the public docket: all but the last four digits of Social Security and financial account numbers, all but the birth year in a date of birth, the names of children under eighteen, and, in criminal cases, home addresses.
Redaction is the filer's job, not the court's. When a party gets it wrong the fix is a motion to seal or to strike and refile, and courts take repeat failures seriously because the unredacted version was public in the meantime.
Sloppy redaction is a recurring embarrassment. Black boxes drawn over text in a PDF often leave the underlying characters selectable, so the safe practice is to remove the text itself rather than cover it, and courts have had to order refilings when the original was extractable.
How it appears on a docket
REDACTED DECLARATION of J. Chen in support of 88 Motion for Summary Judgment. (Unredacted version filed under seal at 91.)
Governing rule
Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2; Fed. R. Crim. P. 49.1
Related terms
- Sealed Document — A sealed document is a filing the court has ordered kept out of public view, so it appears on the docket but cannot be opened by the public.
- Exhibit — An exhibit is a document or object attached to a filing or offered at trial as proof of something.
More on dockets, filings, and court records
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