My take is that federal law and constitutional law trumps judges discretion even in Texas. I think Ghost only wanted to make the general point that in most cases, court is open. I guess I inadvertently got this whole thing going when I asked or suggested that courts are open, but I only said that because someone said something about they being privy to certain court docs while others might not be. I had a problem with that so I questioned it. Turns out, he was talking about the fees paid via Pacer, but to me that didn't adequately answer why he thought he had to hold back certain info he said was ok for his eyes but maybe not others. So I looked up about the copying and sharing of such info gathers from Pacer and there is no copyright nor any reason the info cannot be shared online because it's public info to begin with. So I think the poster was wrong to say the docs were only for him. No reason I could find why he couldn't freely share. That then led into this whole discussion about open courtroom and judge discretion. The answer is that indeed it sometimes is up to a judges discretion and in other cases it's a matter of constitutional law. In most cases where there is not sensitive and/or personal privacy and safety involved, courts are usually to be open to the public.
For anyone interested, here's some Texas law on the issue:
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