Opinion ID: 839193
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Background to FOIA and the Privacy Exemption

Text: Consistent with the legislatively stated public policy supporting the act, [11] the Michigan FOIA requires disclosure of the public record[s] [12] of a public body [13] to persons who request to inspect, copy, or receive copies of those requested public records. [14] However, § 13 of FOIA [15] sets forth a series of exemptions granting the public body the discretion to withhold a public record from disclosure if it falls within one of the exemptions. [16] In the event a FOIA request is denied and the requesting party commences a circuit court action to compel disclosure of a public record, the public body bears the burden of sustaining its decision to withhold the requested record from disclosure. [17] The FOIA exemption at issue in this case is the privacy exemption, MCL 15.243(1)(a), which states: (1) A public body may exempt from disclosure as a public record under this act any of the following: (a) Information of a personal nature if public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. This Court has attempted to construe this provision on many occasions since the enactment of the Michigan FOIA in 1976 and struggled for nearly as many years to reach a consensus regarding its proper interpretation. Kestenbaum v. Michigan State Univ ., [18] marked the first occasion that this Court interpreted the privacy exemption. The plaintiff, for purposes of political mailings, requested a computer tape containing the names and addresses of the university's students. He sued when Michigan State denied the request. An equally divided Court affirmed the Court of Appeals decision that the tape was exempt. [19] Chief Justice Fitzgerald's opinion held that the release of the computer tape would violate the privacy exemption. Focusing on the statutory requirement that the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy, Chief Justice Fitzgerald opined that there has remained throughout this country's legal history one recognized situs of individual control the dwelling place. Without exception, this bastion of privacy has been afforded greater protection against outside assaults than has any other location.[ [20] ] He reasoned that disclosure of the magnetic tape would constitute an invasion of privacy because any intrusion into the home, no matter the purpose or the extent, is definitionally an invasion of privacy. A fortiori, the release of names and addresses constitutes an invasion of privacy, since it serves as a conduit into the sanctuary of the home.[ [21] ] Further, where the student information would be distributed in electronic rather than print form Chief Justice Fitzgerald argued presciently that this invasion was clearly unwarranted because the pervasiveness of computer technology has resulted in an ever-increasing erosion of personal privacy. [22] Justice Ryan's dissenting opinion would have ordered the release of the computer tape. Examining the privacy exemption, Justice Ryan argued for a two-part inquiry to analyze MCL 15.243(1)(a). First, the requested information must be of a personal nature. Second, if the information is of a personal nature, its disclosure must constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. Justice Ryan argued that the information sought was not of a personal nature because he was satisfied that names, addresses, telephone numbers, and other standard identifying information simply are not embarrassing information `of a personal nature' for the overwhelming majority of students at Michigan State University. [23] He took the view that [m]ost citizens voluntarily divulge their names and addresses on such a widespread basis that any alleged privacy interest in the information is either absent or waived. People applying for employment reveal their names and addresses on their resumes; cashing a check or using a credit card requires the release of one's address; and ordering magazines or otherwise communicating through the mail reveals one's address. Being a licensed driver, a car owner, a property owner or taxpayer, an officer of a corporation, an applicant for a marriage license, or a registered voter requires revelation, at a minimum, of one's name and address, information which is often routinely made available to the public. While some people might prefer that their names and addresses not be known to certain individuals such as advertisers, bill collectors, or freeloading relatives, that preference is simply not based on the fact that one's address is a personal, intimate, or embarrassing piece of information. We leave for another day the question whether, in certain unusual circumstances, ordinarily impersonal information might take on an intensely personal character.[ [24] ] Justice Ryan concluded by arguing that even if the information was of a personal nature its disclosure was not a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy because the students had ways to avoid unwanted mailings and because the public benefits of voter registration and political campaigning contemplated in this case clearly outweigh any minimal invasion of privacy. [25] After Kestenbaum, this Court decided several cases without being able to provide a majority rule for the proper construction of the privacy exemption. In Tobin v. Civil Service Comm., [26] a reverse FOIA case, [27] this Court unanimously held that FOIA authorizes, but does not require, nondisclosure of public records falling within a FOIA exemption. [28] The plaintiffs challenged the defendants' decision to release the names and addresses of all classified civil service employees. Even though the parties agreed that the privacy exemption was applicable, this Court declined to consider whether the names and addresses were exempt under FOIA because it rejected the plaintiff's threshold argument that the Michigan FOIA affirmatively prohibited their disclosure. In Int'l Union, United Plant Guard Workers of America v. Dep't of State Police, [29] another evenly divided Court affirmed the Court of Appeals decision ordering the release of reports containing the names and addresses of guards employed by certain security guard agencies. [30] Two years later, this Court issued another fractured decision in State Employees Ass'n v. Dep't of Mgt. & Budget. [31] Five members of this Court affirmed the Court of Appeals, which had ordered disclosure of the home addresses of certain state civil service bargaining units; one member dissented, and another did not participate. [32] In Swickard v. Wayne Co. Med. Examiner, [33] this Court finally reached a majority result and rationale applying the privacy exemption. [34] In Swickard, the plaintiff sought the autopsy report and toxicology test results of a judge who was found shot to death in his mother's home. Rejecting the defendant's argument that the privacy exemption protected their disclosure, Justice Riley's majority opinion concluded, first, that the records were not information of a personal nature. To define personal, the majority consulted a dictionary and discovered that it meant [o]f or pertaining to a particular person; private; one's own. . . . Concerning a particular individual and his intimate affairs, interests, or activities; intimate. . . . [35] The majority also approvingly noted that Justice Ryan, in his Kestenbaum dissent, had defined that statutory phrase as something personal, intimate, or embarrassing. The majority further reasoned that it would look to the common law and constitutional law to determine if disclosure would violate a privacy right protected under FOIA. [36] It held that the scope of the privacy exemption would be gauged by reference to the customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community. . . . [37] After concluding that the deceased judge and his family had no common-law or constitutional right to privacy with respect to the records after his death, the majority concluded that the records were not information of a personal nature and thus their disclosure was not an invasion of privacy. In Booth Newspapers, Inc. v. Univ. of Mich. Bd. of Regents, [38] the plaintiff newspapers sought travel records created in conjunction with the university's search for a new president. The university argued that the records were exempt under the privacy exemption. This Court held that this information was not of a personal nature because there were no customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community that warranted a finding that the travel expense records of a public body constituted information of a personal nature. [39] In Bradley, the central case under consideration in the present appeal, this Court decided whether the personnel records of public school teachers and administrators were exempt from disclosure under the privacy exemption. The Bradley Court affirmed that this exemption contains two elements: first, that the information sought is of a personal nature, and, second, that the disclosure of the information would be a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. With respect to the first element, the majority observed: In the past, we have used two slightly different formulations to describe personal nature. The first defines personal as [o]f or pertaining to a particular person; private; one's own . . . Concerning a particular individual and his intimate affairs, interests, or activities, intimate. . . . We have also defined this threshold inquiry in terms of whether the requested information was personal, intimate, or embarrassing. Combining the salient elements of each description into a more succinct test, we conclude that information is of a personal nature if it reveals intimate or embarrassing details of an individual's private life. We evaluate this standard in terms of the `customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community'. . . . [ [40] ] Using this new definition, the majority concluded that the personnel records sought in Bradley were not of a personal nature because they did not contain any embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential matters. [41] Bradley has since served as the template for the first prong of the privacy exemption. This Court decided two cases involving this exemption after Bradley: Mager v. Dep't of State Police [42] and Herald Co. v. Bay City. [43] In Mager, the plaintiff made a FOIA request for the names and addresses of persons who owned registered handguns. The State Police denied the FOIA request pursuant to the privacy exemption. Relying on the Bradley definition that `information is of a personal nature if it reveals intimate or embarrassing details of an individual's private life,' [44] this Court held in a unanimous per curiam decision that the records fell within this first prong because gun ownership was information of a personal nature as an intimate or perhaps embarrassing detail of one's personal life. [45] The Mager Court then moved to the second prong of the testwhether disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacyand devised what has since been labeled the core purpose test. Mager took guidance from the United States Supreme Court's decision in United States Dep't of Defense v. Fedl. Labor Relations Auth, [46] in which the Court employed a balancing test under the federal FOIA's privacy exemption. [47] Under that test, `a court must balance the public interest in disclosure against the interest Congress intended the exemption to protect,' and the `only relevant public interest in disclosure to be weighed in this balance is the extent to which disclosure would serve the core purposes of the FOIA, which is contributing significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government.' [48] This Court, like the Court in Dep't of Defense, also approvingly quoted the statement that `disclosure of information about private citizens that is accumulated in various governmental files but that reveals little or nothing about an agency's own conduct' would not advance the core purpose of FOIA. [49] In addition, this Court noted that, like the United States Supreme Court, it was `reluctant to disparage the privacy of the home, which is accorded special consideration in our Constitution, laws, and traditions.' [50] Applying these principles, the Mager Court concluded that, under any reasonable balancing, disclosure of the gun-ownership information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy because it was entirely unrelated to any inquiry regarding the inner working of government or how well the Department of State Police was fulfilling its statutory functions. In Herald Co., this Court unanimously held that the defendant Bay City violated FOIA when it refused to disclose public records concerning the final candidates for the position of Bay City fire chief, in particular the candidates' names, current job titles, cities of residence, and ages. Citing the Bradley definition, this Court stated the test for information of a personal nature that information is of a personal nature if it reveals intimate or embarrassing details of an individual's private life. We evaluate this standard in terms of the `customs, mores, or ordinary views of the community'. . . .. [51] This Court concluded that the fact of application for a public job, or the typical background information one may disclose with such an application, is simply not `personal' within the contemplation of this exemption. [52] Moreover, this Court held that the community's mores, customs, and views would not support that this information was of a personal nature. Although the records failed to satisfy the first prong of the privacy exemption, this Court went on to discuss why the records would also fail the second prong. Citing the Mager core-purpose test, this Court noted that disclosure of the information concerning the final candidates for fire chief would serve the policy underlying FOIA because it would facilitate the public's access to information regarding the affairs of their city government. Thus, the invasion of privacy, assuming there was one, was not clearly unwarranted. [53] Thus, the privacy exemption, as currently interpreted, has two prongs that the information sought to be withheld from disclosure must satisfy. First, the information must be of a personal nature. Second, it must be the case that the public disclosure of that information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. We analyze whether the home addresses and telephone numbers in this case satisfy both prongs, particularly the tests for both that we articulated in Bradley and Mager.