DETROIT — Documents related to a whistleblower lawsuit against Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick must be made public, a judge ruled on Feb. 5.

The documents are relevant to a text-messaging sex scandal involving the mayor and his former chief of staff, Christine Beatty.

Kilpatrick was the featured speaker at the Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville last month. Allegations had been made that Kilpatrick spent the night at the Grove Park Inn with a woman other than his wife prior to giving the speech.

Since then, he has been embroiled in a scandal that erupted when the Detroit Free Press published explicit sexual text messages between Beatty and him.

The messages seem to contradict statements he made under oath during the earlier trial that he had not had an affair with Beatty. That case cost Detroit taxpayers $8.5 million.

In ruling that the documents must be revealed, Wayne County Circuit Judge Robert Colombo Jr. confirmed that there had been a secret settlement in the whistleblower suit. The Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News had sued the city to determine whether such a settlement had been made.