Opinion ID: 590942
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Public Interest in Disclosure

Text: 16 Having held that the proposed disclosure infringes a privacy interest, we turn now to the portion of our analysis in Scott most directly affected by Reporters Committee: the definition of the public interest in disclosure under FOIA. Reporters Committee involved a request by the media for the rap sheets (criminal identification records) of an individual allegedly involved with a company which had obtained a number of defense contracts as a result of an improper arrangement with a corrupt Congressman. 489 U.S. at 756-58, 109 S.Ct. at 1473. The FBI denied the rap sheet request, relying in part on FOIA's exemption for records ... compiled for law enforcement purposes, the disclosure of which could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy. 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C) (Exemption 7). 2 In defining the public interest in disclosure of the rap sheet, the Supreme Court stated that FOIA's central purpose is to ensure that the Government's activities be opened up to the sharp eye of public scrutiny, not that information about private citizens that happens to be in the warehouse of the Government be so disclosed. Id. 489 U.S. at 774, 109 S.Ct. at 1482. FOIA's purpose, to allow citizens to know what their government is up to, the Court reasoned, is not fostered by 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. Id., 489 U.S. at 773, 109 S.Ct. at 1481. [W]hether disclosure of a private document ... is warranted must turn on the nature of the requested document and its relationship of the basic purpose of the Freedom of Information Act to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny. Id. (citation omitted). The Court concluded that since the disclosure of the rap sheet would reveal no information about the activities of a federal agency, no public interest cognizable under FOIA existed to be weighed against the invasion of privacy likely to result from such disclosure. Id., 489 U.S. at 773-75, 109 S.Ct. at 1482. See also Silets v. United States Department of Justice, 945 F.2d 227, 229 (7th Cir.1991) (en banc ), cert. denied, --- U.S. ----, 112 S.Ct. 2991, 120 L.Ed.2d 868 (1992) (holding that a federal agency may edit the names and identifying information of private parties from documents that otherwise reveal the operations and activities of the agency because FOIA's central purpose is to shed light on the government's activities (citing Reporters Committee )). 17 Reporters Committee thus defines the public interest in disclosure under FOIA as bringing the activities of the government out into the open. If a FOIA disclosure request would not reveal information about the government's operations, then it is not in the public interest. The FLRA disagrees with this reading of Reporters Committee and argues that the public interest in disclosure should not be drawn so narrowly. Pointing to the Labor Act's express recognition that labor organizations and collective bargaining are in the public interest, 5 U.S.C. § 7101(a), the FLRA maintains that the facilitation of the collective bargaining process which would result from the release of the employees' names and home addresses should be considered in measuring the public interest in disclosure. In support of this argument, the Union argues that Reporters Committee should not be applied to the instant case because the Union made its disclosure request under the Labor Act, whereas the rap sheet request in Reporters Committee arose directly under FOIA. The Ninth Circuit in Navy Resale, 958 F.2d at 1496, and the Third Circuit in Navy Ships, 966 F.2d at 758, adopted this argument to support their holding that the public interest in federal sector collective bargaining could be weighed in the FOIA balance. As the Third Circuit put it, the theory underlying FOIA disclosure, as represented in Reporters Committee, is inapplicable in disclosure cases sought under the Labor statute. Id. 18 The problem with this approach, it seems to us, is that the Labor Act itself by authorizing disclosure not prohibited by law directs us to the Privacy Act, which in turn directs us to FOIA. See Treasury, 884 F.2d at 1457 (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, J., concurring) (the interplay of the Labor and Privacy Acts places the Exemption 6 analysis wholly within FOIA's domain). Section 552a(b)(2) of the Privacy Act makes an exception to its general rule against disclosure for information available under FOIA. Neither it, nor FOIA, makes a further exception for information requests that originate under some other federal statute. We do not believe we are entitled to engage in the sort of imaginative reconstruction that would be necessary to introduce collective bargaining values into the [FOIA] balancing process. Treasury, 884 F.2d at 1453. 19 As we made clear in Scott, FOIA does not permit judges to determine which disclosure requests are in the public interest and which are not. 838 F.2d at 233. FOIA says that any person may obtain information. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3). Either all requestors have access, or none do. The special needs of one, or the lesser needs of another, do not matter. Id. What Reporters Committee adds to this analysis is that the only public interest cognizable under FOIA is the interest of the citizenry in obtaining information about the activities of its government. 489 U.S. at 771, 109 S.Ct. at 1481. In Scott, as we noted above, we held that any disclosure was in the public interest for purposes of FOIA Exemption 6 analysis so long as the requestor proposed a legitimate use for the information. 838 F.2d at 233. Since the union had proposed one such legitimate use (communicating with its bargaining unit employees in order to better represent them), we concluded that this interest overcame the privacy interest in nondisclosure. Id. After Reporters Committee, this analysis is no longer valid. In determining the public interest in disclosure, we may consider only whether the core purpose of FOIA, letting the citizenry know what its government is up to, will be served by release of the employees' home addresses. The release of the names and home addresses of federal employees will not serve that purpose. 3 Thus, we conclude that the Union's argument alleging a public interest in disclosure fails.