Opinion ID: 563773
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The LHM

Text: 48 The final record is the LHM that the FBI prepared for OPM. This document was not created pursuant to a law enforcement investigation; rather, it was prepared to assist the Government in assessing Doe's employment application. Doe accordingly argues that the LHM was not compiled for law enforcement purposes and is thus subject to the amendment provisions of the Act. Doe claims that such a result is compelled by our holding in Vymetalik that records generated solely as part of routine FBI security checks of federal employment applicants would not qualify for exemption under subsection (k)(2). 49 Despite Doe's assertions, Vymetalik does not resolve the question before us. In that case, the record indicated that the information in the disputed documents had been gathered exclusively for the employment review and not for reasons of law enforcement. The court thus found that the only exemption that appeared applicable to the challenged records was that created by subsection (k)(5), which refers to systems of records consisting of investigatory material compiled solely for the purpose of determining suitability, eligibility, or qualifications for Federal ... employment. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(k)(5) (1988) (emphasis added). 12 In remanding the case for additional factual findings, however, the court recognized that, [s]hould the FBI come forward with evidence suggesting a law enforcement purpose other than mere background investigation, the District Court remains free to conclude that the records constitute law enforcement records. 785 F.2d at 1098. 50 While the LHM was created solely for employment review, the investigatory material it contained was originally gathered for law enforcement, not employment, purposes. The critical question, then, is whether the FBI's investigatory information on Doe lost its exempt status when it was subsequently used, in altered form, for a non-law enforcement purpose. 51 The Supreme Court confronted a similar issue in the context of a FOIA Exemption 7 claim in FBI v. Abramson, 456 U.S. 615, 102 S.Ct. 2054, 72 L.Ed.2d 376 (1982). In Abramson, the Court held that information contained in records originally compiled for law enforcement purposes does not lose its exempt status under Exemption 7 when later summarized in records compiled for non-law enforcement purposes. To hold otherwise, the Court stated, would be to treat the originally compiled record and the derivative summary ... completely differently although the content of the information is the same and although the reasons for maintaining its confidentiality remain equally strong. Id. at 625, 102 S.Ct. at 2061. The Court deemed it unnecessary to reach this anomalous result, finding the statutory language of FOIA Exemption 7 reasonably construable to protect that part of an otherwise non-exempt compilation which essentially reproduces and is substantially the equivalent of all or part of an earlier record made for law enforcement uses. Id. This interpretation, the Court stated, more accurately reflects the intention of Congress, is more consistent with the structure of the Act, and more fully serves the purposes of the statute. Id. 52 Abramson, however, did not involve a Privacy Act exemption claim; therefore, it does not directly control our disposition of this case. Nonetheless, as we have already noted, law enforcement records under the Privacy Act are defined in essentially identical terms as under FOIA: both statutes permit exemption of investigatory material compiled for law enforcement purposes. 13 Given this congruence of the relevant statutory language, we believe that the Court's holding in Abramson cannot be ignored in the Privacy Act context. We recognize that a FOIA exemption protects against the disclosure of information, while a Privacy Act exemption of the sort here in issue protects against the amendment or expungement of information that has been disclosed. Thus, the precise concerns motivating the Court's decision in Abramson are not present in a Privacy Act case like this one. Nonetheless, in both contexts, there is a threshhold inquiry as to whether disputed material is properly characterized as compiled for law enforcement purposes. The Court in Abramson said that recompilation does not change the nature of the material, and we do not see how we can avoid this definitional principle in this case. Accordingly, we hold that information contained in a document qualifying for subsection (j) or (k) exemption as a law enforcement record does not lose its exempt status when recompiled in a non-law enforcement record if the purposes underlying the exemption of the original document pertain to the recompilation as well. 53 Our next task, then, is to determine whether shielding the LHM from the Privacy Act's amendment provisions would serve the interests underlying the agency's exemption of its law enforcement records from those provisions. In Abramson, this inquiry was subsumed within the determination of whether the documents came within the ambit of Exemption 7, because Congress expressly restricted the coverage of FOIA's law enforcement record exemption to those records whose disclosure would have specific adverse effects. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(b)(7) (1988) (listing the six types of disclosure-related harms justifying exemption of law enforcement records). As a result, the treatment of recompiled records under FOIA is fairly straightforward: [o]nce it is established that information was compiled pursuant to a legitimate law enforcement investigation and that disclosure of such information would lead to one of the listed harms, the information is exempt. Abramson, 456 U.S. at 631, 102 S.Ct. at 2064. 54 In contrast, the proper analysis of recompiled records under the Privacy Act requires an additional layer of analysis. In creating subsections (j) and (k) of the Privacy Act, Congress did not delineate the agency interests justifying exemption as it had in FOIA. Instead, with one exception, 14 Congress granted agencies broad discretion to exempt all law enforcement records systems from the Act's access and amendment provisions, provided that the agencies promulgate their exemption rules in accordance with the rulemaking provisions of the APA, and provide in those rules statements of the reasons for the exemptions. Thus, in determining whether treatment of the LHM as a law enforcement record would promote the purposes underlying the law enforcement exemption, we must look to the reasons that the FBI itself has given for promulgating that exemption. 55 The FBI's exemption regulation provides two justifications for immunizing the CRS from the access and amendment provisions of subsection (d). The first, mirroring Exemption 7 of FOIA, recites the adverse effects that disclosure of investigative records would have upon law enforcement. See 28 C.F.R. Sec. 16.96(b)(2)(i) & (ii) (1990). The FBI concedes that these access-related concerns do not apply where, as here, the agency refuses to expunge information that has already been disclosed to the person seeking expungement. 56 The FBI's second reason for exemption applies specifically to the Act's amendment provision, subsection (d)(2), and states that exemption from that subsection is appropriate 57 because to require the FBI to amend information thought to be incorrect, irrelevant or untimely, because of the nature of the information collected and the essential length of time it is maintained, would create an impossible administrative and investigative burden by forcing the agency to continuously retrograde its investigations attempting to resolve questions of accuracy, etc. 58 28 C.F.R. Sec. 16.96(b)(2)(iii) (1990). 59 It is quite probable that, given the unsubstantiated nature of the information providing the grist for most law enforcement investigations and the lengthy periods of time that such investigations may cover, subjecting the entire CRS to the amendment requirements of the Act would create an impossible administrative and investigative burden for the FBI. 15 However,, our present inquiry involves the proper treatment of only one discrete subset of the FBI's files--non-law enforcement records that contain information originally compiled for law enforcement purposes. 60 Subjecting these particular records to the Act's amendment requirements is not as clearly necessary to effectuate the purposes behind the agency's exemption from these requirements. The District Court noted, see 718 F.Supp. at 108, and the FBI reiterated at oral argument, that the FBI received approximately 2.3 million name check requests in 1985. It appears, however, that only a small fraction of these requests were submitted for non-law enforcement purposes. The Annual Report of the Attorney General for 1985 indicates that the FBI performed only 4,171 employment background checks, and 615 expanded name checks, for other agencies; 16 the other 2.295 million name checks presumably were conducted for genuine law enforcement purposes, and hence would qualify for subsection (j) or (k) exemption on their own terms. 61 Accordingly, we cannot conclude on the present record that employment-related FBI name checks should be accorded exempt status under the Privacy Act in order to further the interests underlying the FBI's exemption from subsection (d)(2). Instead, we remand this portion of the case to the District Court for further development of the record and a determination as to whether the likely burden to the FBI from processing amendment requests involving non-law enforcement records containing law enforcement information is sufficient to justify exempting such documents from the Act's amendment provisions. In other words, the trial court must assess whether exempting these records is justified by the asserted interests underlying the FBI's exemption regulations. 17 Relevant to this inquiry would be recent statistics on the number of non-law enforcement records containing law enforcement information that the FBI creates for other agencies, as well as the number of amendment requests that the agency receives with regard to such records. 62 Finally, we reject Doe's broader contention that exemption from subsection (d)(2) would be appropriate only if the FBI could demonstrate that complying with the Act's amendment procedures with regard to the particular records at issue in this case would impose an impossible administrative and investigative burden. The FBI's exemption regulation clearly refers to the cumulative burden that the FBI would face were it required to undergo a thorough review of the merits of every amendment request that it received, and to amend each of those records that it determined to be inaccurate or outdated. No single amendment request is ever likely to pose an impossible administrative and investigatory burden; rather, it is the processing of a myriad of such requests that might prove onerous and that arguably provides the justification for the agency's exemption regulation. 18 Accordingly, the District Court should consider upon remand whether the cumulative burden that the FBI would face from having to evaluate and respond to amendment requests involving records in its files compiled for non-law enforcement purposes justifies the exemption of such records as a class from the Act's amendment provisions. 19 63