Opinion ID: 2818141
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Government’s Ability to Use the

Text: Required Records Exception to Abrogate the Fifth Amendment Privilege The Chabots predict that inclusion of their account records in the required records exception will encourage the government to make excessive use of the exception in order to abrogate the Fifth Amendment privilege for any “failure to report” crime. The Chabots also suggest that this would allow the government to abrogate the Fifth Amendment more generally by creating a host of record-retention or reporting requirements. Because there is significant overlap between this argument and the first prong of the required records exception, we address only briefly the Chabots’ argument here. In Shapiro, the Supreme Court explained that there was little danger of Congress completely abrogating the Fifth Amendment privilege as long as the records that Congress required individuals to keep closely served the purpose of a valid, civil regulation. Shapiro, 335 U.S. at 32–33. In that case, the Emergency Price Control Act was a valid exercise of Congress’s power to set commodity prices during wartime 8 that required vendors to keep records of their sales. Id. at 5 n.3, 32–33. Because these sale records closely served the Act’s legitimate regulatory purpose, the Court concluded that inclusion of the petitioner’s sales records in the required records exception was a far cry from Congress’s total abrogation of the Fifth Amendment privilege for any and all crimes. See id. at 4–5, 32–33. In short, because of the required records exception’s exclusive application to valid, regulatory recordkeeping schemes, the government cannot simply create a recordkeeping requirement in order to prosecute crimes, such as a willful failure to report offense. See In re Grand Jury Investigation M.H., 648 F.3d 1067, 1075, 1078 (9th Cir. 2011) (hereinafter “M.H.”). In the present case, the government conditions voluntary participation in foreign banking on maintaining records and reporting information regarding foreign bank accounts. See id. at 1078. As explained in greater detail regarding the first prong of the Grosso test, the recordkeeping requirement is part of a valid, essentially regulatory scheme. These records serve legitimate noncriminal purposes, because government agencies use this data for tax collection, development of monetary policy, and conducting intelligence activities. See United States v. Under Seal, 737 F.3d 330, 335, 337 (4th Cir. 2013) (listing the noncriminal purposes for which government agencies, including the Treasury Department, use account record data); In re Grand Jury Subpoena, 696 F.3d 428, 436 (5th Cir. 2012) (employing similar reasoning). Therefore, it is unlikely that the government will be able to use the required records exception to abrogate the Fifth Amendment privilege for any and all “failure to report” crimes. 9