UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT GREGORY GLINER, In re Ex Parte No. 24-4624 Application of Gregory Gliner, for an D.C. No. 3:24- Order Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782 mc-80087-JD Granting Leave to Obtain Discovery for Use in Foreign Proceedings,

Movant - Appellant. OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California James Donato, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted March 3, 2025 San Francisco, California

Filed April 1, 2025

Before: Kim McLane Wardlaw, Richard A. Paez, and Carlos T. Bea, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Bea 2 IN RE EX PARTE APPLICATION OF GLINER

SUMMARY *

Discovery in Aid of Foreign Proceedings / First Amendment

The panel vacated the district court’s order denying Gregory Gliner’s application pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782 to seek discovery from California company Dynadot, Inc., to identify the potential defendants for Gliner’s defamation lawsuit in the United Kingdom. Gliner sought to identify the anonymous operator of the PolitcialLore.com website and the allegedly pseudonymous author of an article published on the website. The district court denied Gliner’s application in light of the First Amendment interests of the operator of the website and the author of the article. The panel held that the district court’s denial was an abuse of discretion because the record, at this preliminary procedural juncture, did not suggest that anyone’s First Amendment interests were implicated. It is well-settled that the First Amendment protects a publisher’s and an author’s decision to remain anonymous. Foreign citizens outside U.S. territory, however, do not possess rights under the U.S. Constitution, and no evidence suggested that the operator or the author was a U.S. citizen or was present in the United States. In addition, the record did not support a concern about any U.S. audience’s First Amendment right to receive information from abroad.

* This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader. IN RE EX PARTE APPLICATION OF GLINER 3

The panel vacated the district court’s order and remanded for the district court to consider the § 1782 statutory factors and to exercise its discretion in deciding whether to grant discovery, guided by the factors articulated in Intel Corp. v. Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., 542 U.S. 241 (2004).

COUNSEL Joseph R. Oliveri (argued), Clare Locke LLP, Alexandria, Virginia; Michele D. Floyd, Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, San Francisco, California; for Movant- Appellant. Nicolas A. Hidalgo, Matthew T. Cagle, and Nicole A. Ozer, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Northern California, San Francisco, California, for Amicus Curiae American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. 4 IN RE EX PARTE APPLICATION OF GLINER

OPINION BEA, Circuit Judge:

Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1782, Gregory Gliner filed an ex parte application to seek discovery from Dynadot, Inc. (“Dynadot”), 1 a company headquartered in California, to identify the potential defendants for his defamation lawsuit in the United Kingdom. Specifically, Gliner seeks to identify the anonymous operator of the PoliticalLore.com website (“Website”) and the allegedly pseudonymous author of an article published on that Website (“Article”), which article Gliner alleges is defamatory. The district court, without making any relevant factual findings, held that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution applied to the operator of the Website (“Operator”) and the author of the Article