Case concerns reproductive rights of undocumented minor; link: https://player.piksel.com/e/q075qgz6

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals will – for the first time – livestream oral argument audio today on its website at 10:00 a.m. for 17-5236, Garza v. Hargan, from Courtroom 31. The case concerns the abortion rights of an undocumented minor being held in a Texas detention facility.

The only other D.C. Circuit livestream to this point occurred in a 2001 Microsoft antitrust case, though for those arguments the court created a pool feed for press and not a stream directly from its website.

Fix the Court learned over the summer that the circuit had internally endorsed a new live audio policy on a case-by-case basis but that as of yesterday members of the press and public had yet to formally ask for a livestream of a specific hearing.

Yesterday morning, FTC executive director Gabe Roth sent a request to Chief Judge Merrick Garland – link here – and within in hours Garland returned a positive response via Circuit Executive Betsy Paret.

A link to Garland’s letter is here. Those interested in listening to the case will be directed to a link on cadc.uscourts.gov.

The D.C. Circuit will become the third federal appeals court to allow live audio. The Ninth Circuit routinely allows it, as well as live video, and the Fourth Circuit allowed live audio on May 8, 2017, in a travel ban case.

At the district level, Garza v. Hargan had been decided in favor of the minor, but that decision was stayed pending review by the D.C. Circuit.

Rochelle Garza is the minor’s court-appointed guardian, and Eric Hargan is the acting secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.