By Jeffrey A. Roberts
CFOIC Executive Director
The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition is asking a private judge to set aside a suppression order that makes an entire divorce case file unavailable to the public.
CFOIC filed a motion Friday to intervene in the case, one of many being litigated outside of public view in a special judicial system that is mostly available only to “the rich, famous and well-to-do,” according to a Denver Gazette investigative series published in March.
Private judges hired to handle divorce cases under this system “suppress them from public view at far greater rates than in cases that rely on district court judges, leaving some legal experts wondering whether affluent clients are simply buying their way into secrecy,” Gazette reporter David Migoya wrote in one of the stories.
According to the state judicial department’s Integrated Colorado Courts E-Filing System (ICCES), the entire case file in a divorce involving Steven and Alexis Kaufmann — including all filings by the parties and orders entered by the court — is off-limits to the public.
Because of a court order that itself is not available for public inspection, even the register of actions is suppressed, “making it impossible for the public to determine how many filings have been made herein, much less to see those documents’ titles or contents,” says CFOIC’s motion, submitted in Denver District Court by attorney and CFOIC board president Steve Zansberg.
Under the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure and case law, the public is entitled to inspect all records in civil cases, including those concerning domestic relations, unless there is a judicial finding that “the harm to the privacy of a person in interest outweighs the public interest,” the motion says.
“As a member of the public currently being denied its presumptive right of access to judicial records by Order of this Court, the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition has a concrete and protected interest,” it adds.
The rules of civil procedure do not “contemplate the sealing or suppression of the entirety of the court file; only discreet portions of individual documents may be suppressed,” Zansberg wrote in the motion, which cites The Denver Gazette’s reporting. “In light of the recent press attention and public discussion of the conduct of civil cases conducted pursuant to C.R.C.P. 122(f), the public interest in being able to monitor the filings in the present case is particularly heightened, thereby adding considerable weight to that side of the Court’s required balancing.”
Zansberg also cited case law that the public’s right to access judicial records “must be contemporaneous — the public must be able to scrutinize the judicial process as it takes place … [The press provides] immediate descriptions of events as they unfold. To delay or postpone disclosure undermines the benefits of public scrutiny and may have the same result as complete suppression.”
The only publicly available documents in the case of Kaufmann v. Kaufmann concern Alexis Kaufmann’s August 2024 request for a continuance, filed with the Colorado Supreme Court. The justices denied that request and granted a motion to suppress an accompanying index of documents from the underlying divorce proceeding.
The Denver Gazette mentioned the Kaufmann case as one that includes “high-profile people.” Steven Kaufmann is a deputy in the Colorado Attorney General’s office.
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