Opinion ID: 591152
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Balancing Public and Private Interests After Reporters' Committee

Text: 41 The employer federal agencies now argue, and the dissent agrees, that the Supreme Court's opinion in Reporters' Committee alters the balance of public and private interests by eliminating from consideration the public interest--embodied in the FLRS--in collective bargaining. That is, because disclosure of the employees' names and addresses advances the public interest served by the FLRS--protection and promotion of collective bargaining--but does not advance the public interest served by the FOIA--opening agency action to the light of public scrutiny--disclosure of the employees' names and addresses is no longer permissible. The agencies and the dissent have read too much into Reporters' Committee. 42 Initially, of course, it must be acknowledged that if one applies the restrictions announced in Reporters' Committee--confining cognizable interests in disclosure to those that open agency action to the light of public scrutiny--then disclosure clearly would be prohibited in this case. Release of the employees' names and addresses would not in any meaningful way open agency action to the light of public scrutiny; the only good reason to disclose those names and addresses is to allow the unions to fulfill their statutory mandate to represent the employees in their bargaining units. Thus, if letting the public know what the government is up to is the only interest that may be considered in favor of disclosure, then the employees' privacy interests, however limited they may be, would nonetheless prevail, and would prohibit disclosure. 43 However, Reporters' Committee does not control the outcome of this case. This is so for two reasons. First, the exemption addressed by Reporters' Committee is not the same exemption at issue in this case. Reporters' Committee determined the scope of Exemption 7(C) while we construe Exemption 6. While the language in these two exemptions is somewhat similar, the Supreme Court pointed out that there are significant enough differences between them that Exemption 7(C) should be applied more broadly than Exemption 6. Reporters' Committee at 756, 109 S.Ct. at 1473. The Court first recognized that while Exemption 6 mandates that the invasion of privacy be clearly unwarranted, Exemption 7(C) requires that the invasion of privacy be merely unwarranted. The Court then observed that while Exemption 6 applies to disclosures which would constitute an invasion of privacy, Exemption 7(C) pertains to disclosures which could reasonably be expected to constitute such an invasion. Because of these differences, the Supreme Court determined that the standard for evaluating a threatened invasion of privacy interests resulting from the disclosure of records compiled for law-enforcement purposes [under Exemption 7(C) ] is somewhat broader than the standard applicable to personnel, medical, and similar files [under Exemption 6]. Id. at 756, 109 S.Ct. at 1473. 44 Second, unlike the complainants in Reporters' Committee, the unions' disclosure requests in this case do not arise under the FOIA. They are not FOIA requests. Rather, their requests originate from within the FLRS and its Congressionally endorsed framework for protecting and promoting collective bargaining. As a result, Reporters' Committee is not controlling because [t]hat case did not present an occasion to evaluate the [FLRS's] explicit policy favoring collective bargaining as in the public interest, nor the interrelated rights and responsibilities imposed by Congress on an exclusive bargaining representative. FLRA v. United States Dep't of the Navy, Navy Ships Parts Control Center, 966 F.2d 747, 757 (3d Cir.1992) (en banc). In sum, Reporters' Committee has absolutely nothing to say about the FLRS, or the situation that arises when disclosure is initially required by some statute other than the FOIA, and the FOIA is employed only secondarily. 45 Moreover, even the courts that have denied enforcement of the FLRA's orders have recognized that Reporters' Committee does not specifically address the issues raised by this case. The rule announced in Reporters' Committee that the identity of the requesting party has no bearing on the merits of his or her FOIA request, 46 does not necessarily mean that there is no exception to the general rule that the public interest in disclosure under FOIA should be defined exclusively in terms of finding out what the government is up to. Nothing in the [rule announced by Reporters' Committee ] suggests that the Court had considered and rejected the relevance of public interest objectives identified by Congress in other disclosure statutes. Moreover, the argument here is not that the identity of the requester should alter the disclosure interest, but rather that a congressional (non-FOIA) disclosure mandate might do so. 47 Dep't of Treasury, Financial Management Service, 884 F.2d at 1453. 48 The agencies argue, however, that the plain language of the FLRS, the Privacy Act, and the FOIA do not allow for any variations from the norms announced in Reporters' Committee. They suggest that in restricting its reach to disclosures not otherwise prohibited by law the FLRS incorporates unmodified the Privacy Act and the FOIA, and the restrictions that apply to FOIA requests. Thus, they contend, it would require an imaginative reconstruction of the Privacy Act and the FOIA to be able to introduce collective bargaining values into the balancing process. 49 The obvious flaw in the agencies' position, of course, is that prior to the decision in Reporters' Committee, every court that read the plain language of the FLRS, the Privacy Act, and the FOIA concluded that that language required the disclosure of employees' names and addresses. Whatever else Reporters' Committee may have done, it certainly did not amend the language of the FLRS, the Privacy Act, or the FOIA. Thus, it can hardly be said that the plain language of those statutes forbids disclosure, or that to bring into consideration the strong public interest in collective bargaining would require any imaginative reconstruction of those statutes. All that is required is the recognition that Reporters' Committee does not speak to the situation that arises when the Privacy Act and the FOIA are incorporated into some other statutory scheme which contemplates disclosure of agency records for purposes other than opening agency action to the light of public scrutiny. 50 Put differently--and wholly apart from the plainness of Congress' language--it certainly cannot be the case that Congress intended to have it both ways. That is, it is not plausible to suggest both 1) that Congress intended for names and addresses of employees to be disclosed, and 2) that Congress intended that the names and addresses of employees not be disclosed. It must be one or the other. Previously, as noted above, every court to consider the question had held that the correct position was that disclosure was required, a position which presumably gave effect to Congress' intention, as expressed in the FLRS and its incorporation of the Privacy Act and the FOIA. As with the language of the statutes, whatever else Reporters' Committee may have done, it certainly did not alter the Congressional intent embodied in these statutes. Thus, there simply is no merit in the agencies' suggestion that by drafting the FLRS as it did, Congress intended to prohibit disclosure of the names and addresses of employees. 51 It therefore becomes apparent that the agencies' position is not at all as plain as they suggest. They do not argue that the language of the FLRS plainly prohibits disclosure, but rather that the language of the FLRS has somehow become plain in the light of Reporters' Committee--such that it now plainly prohibits disclosure--despite the fact that Reporters' Committee has nothing at all to say about the FLRS. Again, whatever may be urged with respect to the effect of Reporters' Committee, that decision certainly does not mean--indeed, it does not anywhere suggest--that the strong public interest in collective bargaining no longer exists, or that that interest has diminished in value. At most, Reporters' Committee forbids the federal courts to take that interest into account when striking the balance between public and private interests. 52 We do not think, however, that Reporters' Committee goes even that far. Rather, we think it clear that the Supreme Court's opinion in Reporters' Committee is limited to the situation that arises when disclosure is sought under the FOIA alone, such that only the interests served by the FOIA may be included in the balancing. Reporters' Committee simply does not apply when disclosure is commanded by some statute other than the FOIA, a statute which borrows the FOIA's disclosure calculus for another purpose. When, as here, disclosure is sought through the FOIA only because the FOIA has been incorporated into another statute as a mechanism for disclosure of information, it is entirely proper and necessary--if all of Congress' aims are to be achieved--to weigh into the balance the interests recognized by the statute which generates the request for information. See, e.g., Dep't of the Navy, Navy Resale & Services Support Office, 958 F.2d at 1496 (We doubt that Congress intended that its statement of the public interest in section 7101(a)(1) [of the FLRS] be ignored when examining the public interest element incorporated into section 7114(b)(4) through [the] FOIA.). 53 Indeed, it would require a particularly convoluted line of reasoning to conclude that the Congress, while 1) expressly recognizing the great public interest in collective bargaining, 2) acting to protect that interest, and 3) providing for disclosure of information according to a formula which encompasses, balances, and protects all interests, would nevertheless forbid the federal courts to consider the public interest in collective bargaining when balancing the interests favoring and opposing disclosure of information which is conceded to be necessary to the full and proper conduct of collective bargaining. 5 54 In sum, we hold that Reporters' Committee does not require the federal courts, when balancing interests favoring and opposing disclosure, to ignore public interests other than those embodied in the FOIA when the disclosure request originates from some statute other than the FOIA. In such a case, it is proper for the federal court to consider the public interests embodied in the statute which generates the disclosure request. This approach fully accords not only with the FLRS--with its explicit declaration that it seeks to promote collective bargaining and its direction to unions that they represent nonmember employees as faithfully as they do their members--but also fully accords with Congress' aim in establishing the FOIA--to provide a workable formula which encompasses, balances, and protects all interests. Indeed, we can see no basis on which to hold that although Congress expressly recognized the value to the nation of collective bargaining, it intended to exclude consideration of that value from the decision to disclose or not to disclose to labor unions the names and addresses of public sector employees. 6