Court Discloses Speech-Restrictive Barley House Settlement Agreement

I'm delighted to report that the District Court agreed with our position.

I blogged recently (see here and here) about the contempt proceedings in the Barley House controversy, where YouTube personality FaZe Banks (Richard Bengtson) was facing a speech-restrictive court order based on a secret settlement agreement, and the threat of contempt sanctions for posting a video that allegedly violated that agreement. With the help of Cleveland lawyer Patrick Kabat (Chandra Law), I moved to intervene to get the agreement disclosed—and I'm delighted to report that the District Court just agreed with us, and filed the agreement in the publicly available court records (here):

[B]ecause Plaintiffs asked the Court to enforce the confidential settlement agreement, the agreement was discussed in detail during the contempt proceeding, and the parties failed to cite a single case in opposition to the Motion of Eugene Volokh to Intervene and Gain Access to a Judicial Document, nor did they indicate that disclosure of the agreement would harm them in any way, the Court hereby GRANTS the Motion (Doc #: 29). The Clerk of Court shall file the agreement as an exhibit to this Order.

I'm off to a meeting right now, but I hope to read the agreement shortly, and blog about its contents to the extent that they shed light on the broader free speech dispute.

The court also declined to impose contempt sanctions on Bengtson, because it concluded that he was advised by his lawyer that his video was consistent with the agreement.