Key Points

  • The Third Department held that a presumptive First Amendment right of access attaches to an attorney grievance committee's adjudicatory disposition of a disciplinary matter.
  • Because the grievance committee and John A. Sarcone III failed to rebut that presumption, the court ordered the committee to give Campaign for Accountability the admonition it imposed by notice dated April 1, 2026.
  • The court held that documents in a grievance committee's control before its disposition or before it commences a proceeding in the Appellate Division are investigatory, and that no presumptive First Amendment right of access attaches to them.
  • The court rejected Campaign for Accountability's traditional good-cause arguments, including waiver and heightened public interest, and denied access to Sarcone's written response to the complaint.
  • The court treated the First Amendment claim as a means of establishing good cause under Judiciary Law § 90(10), not as a challenge to the statute's constitutionality.

A New York appeals court on Oct. 22 ordered a state attorney grievance committee to release the admonition it had privately imposed on attorney John A. Sarcone III, holding that the First Amendment gives the public a presumptive right to see a grievance committee's final rulings on lawyer misconduct.

The Appellate Division, Third Department, ruled in an unsigned per curiam decision issued by a panel of Presiding Justice Garry and Justices Ceresia, McShan, Powers and Ryba. The court granted part of a petition by Campaign for Accountability, the not-for-profit group that filed the grievance complaint, and directed the committee to give the group a copy of the admonition "forthwith." The panel refused the group's request for the rest of the committee's file, including Sarcone's written response to the complaint.

New York's Judiciary Law § 90(10) provides that records of attorney grievance matters "shall be sealed and be deemed private and confidential." The statute lifts that seal automatically only when the Appellate Division itself disciplines a lawyer in a formal proceeding. In every other case, a party seeking the records must show "good cause." The decision makes the First Amendment a route to that showing for a grievance committee's final disposition, and it holds that the committee's investigative record falls outside the constitutional right.

The court described Campaign for Accountability as an organization "with the primary mission of exposing misconduct and malfeasance in public life." The group's complaint concerned Sarcone's conduct during and after a June 2025 incident in which he was the victim of criminal behavior.

The Attorney Grievance Committee for the Third Judicial Department investigated, found a sufficient basis for a finding of professional misconduct, and imposed the admonition by notice dated April 1, 2026. The committee told the group in April that it had acted but cited confidentiality rules in declining to say how.

In July the group asked the court to order divulgence, the statutory term for unsealing, of every record in the matter. The committee told the court it had no good-faith basis to oppose releasing its disposition on First Amendment grounds, but it opposed releasing its internal file as investigative work. Sarcone "adamantly opposes the disclosure of any and all documents related to his disciplinary proceeding," the court wrote.

The panel first held that the group had not shown good cause under the tests New York courts have traditionally applied. It rejected a waiver argument, noting that the complainant, not Sarcone, had publicized the records. The court also declined to find a heightened public interest in Sarcone's "role as a public official," because the misconduct "did not arise out of respondent's formal execution of his public duties."

Under a test the U.S. Supreme Court set out in 1986, a presumptive right of access attaches when a proceeding has historically been open to the public and when public access plays a significant positive role in how the proceeding functions. The panel relied on the Second Circuit's 2026 decision in Civil Rights Corps v. LaSalle, which applied that test to a Second Department grievance committee's dispositions of complaints against assistant district attorneys.

The federal ruling, "while not fully binding upon this Court, is persuasive," the panel wrote. "In this vein, we agree that the presumptive First Amendment right of access attaches to AGC's adjudicatory disposition of respondent's disciplinary proceeding," the court held. The panel pointed to the long public history of attorney disciplinary proceedings.

Once the right attaches, the party seeking secrecy must show, through specific findings on the record, that closure is essential to preserve higher values and is narrowly tailored. The committee conceded it could not make that showing. Sarcone argued that disclosure would mark the end of all private discipline in New York. The panel disagreed, writing that dispositions "will remain private until such time as an application for divulgence thereof is made" and the court determines, after a full adjudicatory process, that the presumption has not been rebutted.

The committee's investigative file stays sealed. The panel drew on the Court of Appeals' 1928 decision in People ex rel. Karlin v. Culkin, which likened inquiries into attorney misconduct to grand jury proceedings. The court quoted Chief Judge Cardozo's opinion in that case: "Reputation in such a calling is a plant of tender growth, and its bloom, once lost, is not easily restored." Public access to preliminary inquiries "would defy logic and impede the prompt and orderly fact-finding objectives of a grievance committee," the panel wrote.

The court also rejected the group's argument that Sarcone's written response was effectively a "traditional litigation document." A committee that requests a response "is simply trying to determine what happened," the panel wrote. It held that documents in a committee's control before its disposition, or before it brings charges in court, "are investigatory in nature and, therefore, no presumptive First Amendment right of access has attached to same."

In a footnote, the panel left for future cases the scope of any access right to proceedings before the Appellate Division itself.

The divulgence proceeding was itself confidential. The court heard argument on Sept. 17 in a courtroom closed to the public and the press but kept an audio-visual recording for potential future disclosure. The decision vacated the court's confidential decision and order of Sept. 1, 2026.

Lawyers for Campaign for Accountability included Gregory L. Diskant of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. Sarcone was represented by Michael J. Hutter of Powers & Santola LLP. Jonathan R. Donnellan of Hearst Corporation represented Advance Publications Inc. and other amici curiae.

Under the court's order, the committee must now give the group a copy of the April 1 admonition. Sarcone's response and the rest of the investigative file remain confidential unless the group or another applicant shows some other good cause for divulgence under Judiciary Law § 90(10).