Opinion ID: 2211455
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Freedom of Information Act Claim

Text: Subsection 1(2) of the FOIA declares that [i]t is the public policy of this state that all persons ... are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and public employees, consistent with this act. The people shall be informed so that they may fully participate in the democratic process. [MCL 15.231(2); MSA 4.1801(1)(2) (emphasis added).] Consistent with this broadly declared legislative policy, the FOIA's specific provisions generally require the full disclosure of public records in the possession of a public body: [5] (1) Upon an oral or written request which describes the public record sufficiently to enable the public body to find the public record, a person has a right to inspect, copy, or receive copies of a public record of a public body.... (2) A public body shall furnish a requesting person a reasonable opportunity for inspection and examination of its public records, and shall furnish reasonable facilities for making memoranda or abstracts from its public records during the usual business hours.... (3) This act does not require a public body to make a compilation, summary, or report of information.... (4) This act does not require a public body to create a new public record, except as required in sections 5 and 11, and to the extent required by this act for the furnishing of copies, or edited copies pursuant to section 14(1), of an already existing public record. [MCL 15.233; MSA 4.1801(3).] The FOIA provides, in § 13, several exemptions which, if applicable, permit a public body to deny a request for disclosure of public records. [6] On its express terms, the FOIA is a prodisclosure statute, and the exemptions stated in § 13 are narrowly construed. Mager, supra at 143, 595 N.W.2d 142; Bradley v. Saranac Community Schools Bd. of Ed., 455 Mich. 285, 293, 565 N.W.2d 650 (1997); Swickard v. Wayne Co. Medical Examiner, 438 Mich. 536, 544, 475 N.W.2d 304 (1991). The burden of proof rests on the party asserting the exemption. Bradley, supra at 293, 565 N.W.2d 650; Swickard, supra at 544, 475 N.W.2d 304. At issue in the instant case is the following FOIA exemption: A public body may exempt from disclosure as a public record under this act: (a) Information of a personal nature where the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. [MCL 15.243(1); MSA 4.1801(13)(1).] The trial court concluded that plaintiff's FOIA request was defective because it requested information rather than documents, and, alternatively, that the information requested was exempt from disclosure as [i]nformation of a personal nature where the public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. The Court of Appeals disagreed on both counts, and reversed the grant of summary disposition for defendants. We conclude that the requested records were not exempt from disclosure, and therefore affirm the holding of the Court of Appeals.
The FOIA does not establish detailed requirements for a valid request. Instead, it merely requires that a request describe[ ] the public record sufficiently to enable the public body to find the public record. MCL 15.233(1); MSA 4.1801(3)(1). Defendants argue that plaintiff's request failed to meet this basic requirement. We disagree. In this case, plaintiff requested the names, current job titles, cities of residence and age of the seven final candidates for the job of Bay City fire chief. The city admits that this description was sufficient to allow it to find documents containing the information, but argues that the request was flawed because it requested the information itself, rather than documents containing the information. [7] Also according to defendants, to satisfy plaintiff's request, the city would have had to create a new public record. Defendants' arguments are deeply flawed. We begin by reiterating that the Legislature entitled this statute the Freedom of Information Act, and declared as the public policy of this state that all persons... are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government.... MCL 15.231(2); MSA 4.1801(1)(2) (emphasis added). Consistent with this stated purpose, the Legislature did not impose detailed or technical requirements as a precondition for granting the public access to information. Instead, the Legislature simply required that any request be sufficiently descriptive to allow the public body to find public records containing the information sought. In contrast, the city would have us read an additional requirement into the statutethat a request must describe the specific public records to be disclosed. We have no authority to impose requirements not found in the statute, and we note that it would be odd indeed to ask a party who has no access to public records to attempt specifically to describe them. Because the request in this case was sufficient to allow the city to find the requested information, the request was valid under M.C.L. § 15.233(1); MSA 4.1801(3)(1). Defendants' related argument contends that plaintiff's request would have required the city to create a new public recordsomething the statute expressly states that the city is not required to do. MCL 15.233(4); MSA 4.1801(3)(4). Again, we disagree with defendants' construction of the FOIA. Plaintiff's request did not specify or require the disclosure of any document, newly created or otherwise, from the city. It simply asked for information. Under the FOIA, the city could have satisfied the request in several different ways. It could have allowed plaintiff access to the public records containing the information (such as the applicants' resumes or applications), it could have allowed plaintiff to copy the public records containing the information, or it could have provided plaintiff with copies of the public records containing the information. MCL 15.233(1); MSA 4.1801(3)(1). It is true that the request also could have been satisfied by the city's creation of a new public record, but plaintiff did not request creation of such a record, and the fact that the city had no obligation to create a record says nothing about its obligation to satisfy plaintiff's request in some other manner as required by the FOIA. [8]
Defendants also argue that the information plaintiff requested is exempt from disclosure as information of a personal nature pursuant to M.C.L. § 15.243(1); MSA 4.1801(13)(1). The trial court agreed, finding that public disclosure of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of the applicants' privacy. The Court of Appeals disagreed, reasoning that the information disclosed is not of a personal nature, and, alternatively, that [d]isclosure of the requested information would not constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy because nothing of a highly personal nature would be disclosed. 228 Mich.App. at 290, 577 N.W.2d 696. This case requires us to decide whether the fact of application for a particular public job and information supplied therewith is information of a personal nature and, if so, whether the disclosure of such information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. We begin by once again observing that this exception involves `a highly subjective area of the law where the Legislature has provided little statutory guidance'.... Mager, supra at 143, 595 N.W.2d 142, quoting Swickard, supra at 556, 475 N.W.2d 304. Bearing this in mind, we conclude that the information sought is not personal, and, moreover, that its revelation would not constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy.
The text of the statute at issue reveals little about the Legislature's intended scope when it provided an exemption for information of a personal nature. From this Court's numerous attempts to fashion a workable formulation for determining on a case-by-case basis whether requested information is personal within the Legislature's contemplation, the following standard has emerged: [W]e 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....' [ Mager, supra at 142, 595 N.W.2d 142, quoting Bradley, supra at 294, 565 N.W.2d 650 (emphasis added).] Applying this standard in Bradley, we determined that personnel records of public school teachers and administrators were not of a personal nature: Significantly, none of the documents contain information of an embarrassing, intimate, private, or confidential nature, such as medical records or information relating to the plaintiffs' private lives. Moreover, the appellants have not alleged specific private matters that would be revealed by the disclosure of their personnel records. Instead, the requested information consists solely of performance appraisals, disciplinary actions, and complaints relating to the plaintiffs' accomplishments in their public jobs. Because the requested information does not disclose intimate or embarrassing details of the plaintiffs' private lives, we hold that the requested records do not satisfy the personal-nature element of the privacy exemption. [ Id. at 295, 565 N.W.2d 650.] More recently, in Mager, supra, we applied this same standard and reached the opposite conclusion because of the nature of the request at issue there. In Mager, the plaintiff requested that the State Police provide the names and addresses of persons who owned registered handguns. In determining that the fact of gun ownership was information of a personal nature, we noted that [t]he ownership and use of firearms is a controversial subject, and that [a] citizen's decision to purchase and maintain firearms is a personal decision of considerable importance. Id. at 143, 595 N.W.2d 142. Accordingly, we held that gun ownership is an intimate or, for some persons, potentially embarrassing detail of one's personal life. Id. at 144, 595 N.W.2d 142. In contrast to the fact of gun ownership, whichassessing the customs, mores or ordinary views of the communitycertainly may be viewed as an intimate and potentially embarrassing aspect of one's private life, we conclude 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. Given the public nature of the position at issue, we think it difficult to conclude that the customs, mores, and views of the community contemplate that an application for such a position could be made without expectation of considerable public scrutiny. Certainly, defendants have failed to establish on this record why any of the information requested by plaintiff is the kind of intimate or embarrassing information that this FOIA exception protects. Importantly, even if the requested information was contained in public documents that also referenced embarrassing or intimate personal information (for example, medical data), the FOIA imposes on the city a duty to separate the exempt and nonexempt material and make the nonexempt material available for examination and copying. MCL 15.244(1); MSA 4.1801(14)(1); see also Evening News Ass'n v. City of Troy, 417 Mich. 481, 503, 339 N.W.2d 421 (1983).
Although we have already concluded that the information sought was not characteristically of a personal nature and, therefore, that the privacy exemption does not apply, we will now briefly address the second step of the inquiry: whether disclosure would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. We first note that the trial court committed an error of law when it proceeded directly to this inquiry without first determining whether the request sought information that was of a personal nature. The trial court additionally erred when it concluded that, on these particular facts, disclosure of the requested information would have constituted a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. By providing that the invasion of privacy must be clearly unwarranted, the Legislature has unmistakably indicated that the intrusion must be more than slight, but a very significant one indeed. In Mager, we determined that disclosure of the names and addresses of registered gun owners would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of the gun owners' privacy. Taking guidance from federal decisions concerning the federal FOIA, we noted that `a court must balance the public interest in disclosure against the interest [the Legislature] intended the exemption to protect.' Id. at 145, 595 N.W.2d 142, quoting United States Dep't of Defense v. Federal Labor Relations Authority, 510 U.S. 487, 495, 114 S.Ct. 1006, 127 L.Ed.2d 325 (1994). We further held that the relevant public interest to be weighed in this balance `is the extent to which disclosure would serve the core purpose of the FOIA, which is contributing significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government. ' Mager, supra at 145, 595 N.W.2d 142, quoting United States Dep't of Defense, supra at 495, 114 S.Ct. 1006 (emphasis in original). On the basis of the foregoing, we held that fulfilling a request for personal information concerning private citizens, where the request was entirely unrelated to any inquiry regarding the inner working of government, would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy. Mager, supra at 146, 595 N.W.2d 142. In short, when the information sought is embarrassing or intimate, and the relationship between the personal information to be disclosed and the operations of our government is slight, the weaker is the case that disclosure should be made under the FOIA. In contrast to the highly personal information at issue in Mager, we conclude that disclosure of the information concerning the final candidates for fire chief in the instant case would serve the policy underlying the FOIA because disclosure would facilitate the public's access to information regarding the affairs of their city government. It can hardly be challenged that the citizens of Bay City had a valid interest in knowing the identities of the final candidates considered in contention for this high-level public position. Keeping in mind that defendants bear the burden of proof that an exemption applies, and balancing the public interest against the relatively circumscribed privacy interest protected by the FOIA exemption, we cannot conclude that the disclosure sought might result in a clearly unwarranted invasion of an individual's privacy. [9]