On January 11, 2016, in The Center for Auto Safety v. Chrysler Group, LLC, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the standard used to determine public access to motions filed under seal hinges on whether the motion is "more than tangentially related to the merits of the case" rather than on whether the motion is literally dispositive ( (9th Cir. Jan. 11, 2016)).

In 2013, the plaintiffs filed a putative class action alleging defects in Chrysler vehicles. The parties stipulated to a protective order that required them to file under seal any motion that attached a document that a party had designated as "confidential." In 2014, the plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction to require Chrysler to notify the proposed class of the alleged risks present in the vehicles. The plaintiffs and Chrysler each filed memoranda and supporting documents under seal. The Center for Auto Safety (CAS) moved to intervene and filed a motion to unseal the documents.

In deciding whether to unseal the documents, the district court analyzed whether a party needed to show either compelling reasons or good cause why the documents should remain under seal. The district court concluded that the less stringent good cause standard applied to non-dispositive motions, while the compelling reasons standard applied to dispositive motions. The court further defined dispositive motions literally, as motions that could lead to final determination of some issue. Under this definition, it found that the motion for preliminary injunction was not dispositive. Therefore, the district court applied the good cause standard to CAS's motion to unseal and concluded that good cause existed to keep the documents sealed. CAS appealed.

The Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded. It held that a court cannot look only to whether a sealed motion is literally dispositive or non-dispositive in determining which standard to use. Rather, courts must use a more general test: if the motion is "more than tangentially related to the merits of the case," then the compelling reasons standard must apply. The Ninth Circuit explained that public access to court documents is generally presumed, as it is a long-established right. Therefore, a party must typically show compelling reasons to keep a court document sealed. The good cause standard that FRCP 26(c) sets out is an exception to the normal presumption. Here, because the plaintiffs' preliminary injunction motion was more than tangentially related to the merits of the case, the Ninth Circuit remanded the case to the district court to apply the compelling reasons standard.