Opinion ID: 839193
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Information of a personal nature

Text: In answering the first question whether the home addresses and telephone numbers of university employees are information of a personal nature, we also reconsider whether Bradley's exposition of that phrase fully captures its intended meaning. The concurring judge on the Court of Appeals suggested, and defendant argues, that the Bradley articulation is too narrow. [54] We hold that the Bradley formulation, as far as it goes, is a correct description of what information is of a personal nature. Thus, we continue to hold that intimate or embarrassing details of an individual are of a personal nature. However, a case such as this leads us to conclude that intimate and embarrassing do not exhaust the intended scope of that statutory phrase. Indeed, the Bradley Court itself noted, whether inadvertently or not, that information of a personal nature includes more than intimate or embarrassing details of a person's life. After articulating its succinct test, the Bradley Court expanded it by concluding that none of the documents [sought in that case] contain information of an embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential nature. [55] After careful consideration, we conclude that the observation from Bradley that intimate, embarrassing, private, or confidential information is of a personal nature more accurately and fully describes the intended scope of the statutory text as assessed in the first prong of the privacy exemption. Indeed, the words personal and private are largely synonymous. [56] Thus, private or confidential information relating to a person, in addition to embarrassing or intimate details, is information of a personal nature. [57] With the test thus clarified, the next question is whether employees' home addresses and telephone numbers reveal embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential details about those individuals. We hold that they do. Where a person lives and how that person may be contacted fits squarely within the plain meaning of this definition because that information offers private and even confidential details about that person's life. As Chief Justice Fitzgerald noted in Kestenbaum, the release of names and addresses constitutes an invasion of privacy, since it serves as a conduit into the sanctuary of the home. [58] The potential abuses of an individual's identifying information, including his home address and telephone number, are legion. For example, some of the affiants in this case attested that they do not want their information added to mass mailings, perhaps seeking to avoid the inevitable harassing telephone calls of telemarketers or deluge of junk mail. On a more serious level, other affiants stated that their physical safety or the safety of their families would be jeopardized if their identifying information fell into the wrong hands, such as those of an ex-spouse or a disgruntled patient. These realistic concerns illustrate in practical ways why an individual's home address and telephone number are information of a personal nature. [59] And, although the federal FOIA privacy exemption contains language different from Michigan's FOIA privacy exemption, the United State Supreme Court's treatment of that provision is useful to our analysis. [60] In Dep't of Defense, the Court unanimously rejected a union's federal FOIA request seeking the home addresses of federal civil service employees. Addressing the employees' interest in the nondisclosure of their home addresses, it opined: It is true that home addresses often are publicly available through sources such as telephone directories and voter registration lists, but [i]n an organized society, there are few facts that are not at one time or another divulged to another. The privacy interest protected by [the federal exemption] encompass[es] the individual's control of information concerning his or her person. An individual's interest in controlling the dissemination of information regarding personal matters does not dissolve simply because that information may be available to the public in some form.[ [61] ] The Court astutely recognized that an individual's control over his identifying information is essential where the information regards such personal matters. An individual's home address and telephone number might be listed in the telephone book or available on an Internet website, but he might nevertheless understandably refuse to disclose this information, when asked, to a stranger, a coworker, or even an acquaintance. The disclosure of information of a personal nature into the public sphere in certain instances does not automatically remove the protection of the privacy exemption and subject it to disclosure in every other circumstance. Finally, while it is not critical to our holding that home addresses and telephone numbers are information of a personal nature, the fact that in this case certain university employees actively asserted control over their identifying information by withholding their home addresses and telephone numbers from publication in the university faculty and staff directory undoubtedly lends credence to that conclusion. [62] Particularly in this case, then, the argument that this information is not of a personal nature reaches its nadir. [63] 3. Public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy Having reached this conclusion, we must move to the second prong of the privacy exemption and determine whether disclosure of the information at issue would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. We conclude, under Mager's core-purpose test, that it would result in a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. Simply put, disclosure of employees' home addresses and telephone numbers to plaintiff would reveal `little or nothing' about a governmental agency's conduct, [64] nor would it further the stated public policy undergirding the Michigan FOIA. [65] Disclosure of employees' home addresses and telephone numbers would not shed light on whether the University of Michigan and its officials are satisfactorily fulfilling their statutory and constitutional obligations and their duties to the public. When this tenuous interest in disclosure is weighed against the invasion of privacy that would result from the disclosure of employees' home addresses and telephone numbers, the invasion of privacy would be clearly unwarranted.