Opinion ID: 508924
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Claims Based Upon the Administrative Procedure Act

Text: 36 We turn, finally, to evaluate under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 551 et seq., Doe's claims for equitable relief. 8 Section 10(a) of the APA provides that [a] person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action ..., is entitled to judicial review thereof. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 702. Section 10(e), in turn, provides that a reviewing court shall hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be ... arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2)(A); see also Chrysler Corp. v. Brown, 441 U.S. 281, 317-19, 99 S.Ct. 1705, 1725-27, 60 L.Ed.2d 208 (1979) (holding that grant of injunctive relief to prevent violations of Trade Secrets Act could rest on Sec. 10(a) of the APA even though the underlying enactment gave rise to no private right of action for damages). 37 This clearly is a case of agency action not in accordance with law within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2): for the reasons stated in Doe II and adopted by the district court, the disclosure of Doe's psychiatric records violated the Veterans' Records Statute, as amended by the Privacy Act. The issue thus becomes whether a injunctive relief is warranted prohibiting the VA from disseminating Doe's clinical psychiatric files. 38 At present, two copies of Doe's medical records exist. The original is kept by the VA; a duplicate is held by the district court under seal, protected from disclosure by the sealed-records provisions of Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(c) and Fed.R.Crim.P. 6(e). The VA, however, has not pledged not to disclose Doe's medical records in the future. Quite the contrary: under a regulation adopted by the VA in 1982 shortly after the initiation of this case, the VA specifically identified the disclosure of information pursuant to grand jury subpoenas as a routine use exempted from Privacy Act coverage under that statute's routine use exclusion. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(b)(3). Routine Use 23 states: 39 Any information in this system may be disclosed to a federal grand jury, a Federal Court or a party in litigation or a Federal Agency or party to an administrative proceeding being conducted by a Federal Agency, in order for the VA to respond to and comply with the issuance of a federal subpoena. 40 47 Fed.Reg. 51,841 (1982). 41 Doe II clearly establishes Doe's right not to have the highly personal information and thoughts he has shared with his VA physicians released by the VA in response to a grand jury subpoena. He is clearly entitled to declaratory relief to this effect. For similar reasons, we agree with Doe that Routine Use 23 is invalid to the extent that it authorizes disclosures pursuant to grand jury subpoenas. The Privacy Act defines a routine use as the use of such record for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which it is collected. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(a)(7). It is by now well-established that agencies covered by the Privacy Act may not utilize the routine use exception to circumvent the mandates of the Privacy Act. See, e.g., Wisdom v. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 713 F.2d 422, 424 (8th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1021, 104 S.Ct. 1272, 79 L.Ed.2d 678 (1983) (HUD certainly could not ignore the dictates of the Privacy Act in promulgating regulations); Parks v. United States Internal Revenue Service, 618 F.2d 677, 681 (10th Cir.1980); see also Andrews v. Veterans' Administration of the United States, 613 F.Supp. 1404, 1413 (D.Wyo.1985) (Any regulations enacted under the Privacy Act must be consistent with its purposes, and inconsistent regulations are invalid, and will not justify release of covered information); cf. Tijerina v. Walters, 821 F.2d 789, 795 (D.C.Cir.1987) (construing provisions of Privacy Act allowing agencies to exempt themselves from Act's civil remedies section to extend only so far as they do not contravene the language of the Act and the purpose behind the general exemptions provision). 42 In Doe II, we held squarely that a grand jury subpoena did not qualify as an order of the court so as to come within the exception to the Privacy Act's prohibition upon the disclosure of confidential medical records. Our holding was based in part on the interpretation given similar language in other statutes; we reasoned that Congress consciously chose to employ the 'order' language in the Privacy Act rather than the more expensive 'process' language in the Veterans' Records Statute. See 779 F.2d at 82-83. But we also relied in Doe II on the purpose and the structure of the [Privacy] Act, finding that [i]n this case, a fair reading of the statute and its purpose leads to the definite conclusion that Congress did not intend to allow disclosure pursuant to a typical grand jury subpoena. Id. at 84. We pointed out that [t]o read the 'order of the court' language as permitting disclosure pursuant to a subpoena, would create a gaping hole in the overall scheme of the Privacy Act. We stated: 43 One of Congress' explicit goals in enacting the Privacy Act was to preclude overzealous investigators from running roughshod over an individual's privacy, and the grand jury subpoena simply does not safeguard against that danger. 44 Id. 45 Given that our refusal to permit grand jury subpoenas to penetrate the Privacy Act barrier against disclosure of confidential medical records was based on a combination of congressional purpose and the structural integrity of the Privacy Act, it is inconceivable that the agency could circumvent it merely by taking the routine use route. The routine use contemplated here would simply not be for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which the record was collected in light of our holding and rationale in Doe II. The records can be disclosed only if they come within a legitimate exception to the Privacy Act, e.g., a written request by the head of another agency or an authentic order of the court. We must therefore conclude that Routine Use 23 is invalid insofar as it would permit routine disclosure pursuant to a grand jury subpoena alone. 46 Having concluded that Doe is entitled to declaratory relief against future VA disclosure unauthorized by the Veterans' Records Statute, and having invalidated the VA's routine use regulation insofar as it is inconsistent with the interpretation of that statute offered in Doe II, we believe it unnecessary to award Doe additional injunctive relief. See United States v. W.T. Grant Co., 345 U.S. 629, 633, 73 S.Ct. 894, 897, 97 L.Ed. 1303 (1953). Given that (with the exception of the copy held by the district court) the VA alone possesses Doe's medical records, we also see no need to issue an injunction on his behalf against the U.S. Attorney's office. 47