Opinion ID: 516898
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Exemption 4 Balance

Text: 24 On remand, if the district court ultimately finds that disclosure will impair the government's information-gathering, it will once again be required to conduct the rough balancing of the extent of impairment and the importance of the information against the public interest in disclosure. Post v. HHS I, 690 F.2d at 269. In performing that balance, we caution that in this case, there is no longer any room on the scales for weighing the possibility that public disclosure of Form HHS-474 will cause some scientists to decline service on the NCI's peer review committees altogether. Whatever validity this contention of nonparticipation might have had at the start of this litigation (or would have if similar litigation were commenced in the future), for the purpose of this action the issue of nonparticipation was waived by the government when it abandoned the claim before this court in Post v. HHS I. See 690 F.2d at 268 n. 51 (noting that it was not necessary to address the government's need to attract qualified scientists because [t]he government did not ask us in this case to consider including that specific interest in the National Parks I test). Nothing appears in the record or in the arguments before this court to justify excusing the government from the general rule that a party cannot raise anew on remand an issue that it failed to pursue in the appeal. 9 25 Moreover, the district court may not, as it did below, inject the risk of future scientist nonparticipation in NCI programs into the balancing process on the public interest side when the government is barred from pursuing it on the impairment side. When we refer to a rough balancing under exemption 4, we mean that information will be withheld only when the affirmative interests in disclosure on the one side are outweighed by the factors identified in National Parks I (and its progeny) militating against disclosure on the other side. More simply put, minor disadvantages flowing from disclosure cannot overcome the disclosure mandate of FOIA. Post v. HHS I, 690 F.2d at 269. When we first announced the test for exemption 4 confidentiality in National Parks I, we attempted to capture in two inquiries (serious competitive harm and impairment of government information-gathering) the most obvious interests that Congress was seeking to protect in the exemption, while expressly reserving the question whether other governmental interests are embodied in this exemption. 498 F.2d at 770 n. 17. In Critical Mass Energy Project v. NRC, 830 F.2d 278 (D.C.Cir.1987), we subsequently found that other interests may indeed be considered under exemption 4. Yet we think a fair reading of our cases makes it clear that other interests can be introduced into the balance only as factors weighing against disclosure, in a manner similar to the two interests identified in National Parks I. All of these factors, alone or in combination, are negative interests properly weighed against the strong public interest in disclosure that permeates FOIA. The district court, however, allowed the risk of future scientist nonparticipation to diminish the overall public interest in disclosure that would be balanced against the negative factors. Such an approach could not have been intended by the drafters of exemption 4 for it would allow courts to count anti-disclosure factors on both sides of the scale, adding weight to the impairment side and reducing the weight on the disclosure side. The thrust of FOIA is distinctly in the opposite direction, and exemption 4 contemplates a straightforward balance of the pros and the cons of disclosure in any particular case.