The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday rejected the United Network for Organ Sharing’s attempt to keep sealed internal emails that a district judge characterized as containing “colorable evidence of animosity and even some measure of regional bias.”

The plaintiffs—a group of patients on a liver transplant waiting list, as well as several hospitals that conduct the transplants—argued otherwise. In their lawsuit, initially filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, they claimed that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and government contractor United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) failed to follow legal procedures in developing a new liver allocation policy.