Opinion ID: 2646723
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: The “public aspects” prong

Text: The third Grosso prong asks whether the required records “‘have assumed ‘public aspects’ which render them at least analogous to public documents.’” 7 Even if we were to look at only the customs of criminal circles, if a criminal don’t have this information, how can he retrieve his ill gotten gains? He must either possess a photographic memory or well‐encrypted devices hidden in some offshore location. 24 Grand Jury Proceedings, No. 4‐10, 707 F.3d at 1273 (quoting Grosso, 390 U.S. at 68). The parties dispute the meaning of the “public aspects” test, which – as a vestige of Boyd – may not have the same legal significance as it did in 1948, when the public / private distinction was of paramount importance. Cf. Fisher, 425 U.S. at 400‐01, Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Documents and the Privilege against Self‐Incrimination, 48 U. PITT. L. REV. 27, 36‐44 (1986). Doe urges us to hold that the test requires one of three factors: records have “public aspects” when they “are a direct mainstay of a regulatory scheme that promotes the public welfare,” “are vital to a regulatory regime promulgated in response to emergency or other exigent conditions,” or “are routinely forwarded to a regulatory or licensing body as a means of protecting the public.” Doe Brief at 49‐50. Although he cites to authority in support of the proposition that each of these is sufficient to establish “public aspects,” we see no evidence that one of these three prongs must be met to conclude that the records have a “public aspect.” “The Government’s anxiety to obtain information known to a private individual does not without more render that information public. Nor does it stamp information with a public character that the Government has formalized 25 its demands in the attire of a statute.” Marchetti, 390 U.S. at 57. Marchetti restricts Congress’s ability to require records for the purpose of securing access to otherwise‐private information. However, “records required to be kept pursuant to valid regulatory programs have a ‘public aspect’ for purposes of constitutional analysis, and thus are not private papers entitled to the protection of the fourth or fifth amendments.” Donovan v. Mehlenbacher, 652 F.2d 228, 231 (2d Cir. 1981). “Where personal information is compelled in furtherance of a valid regulatory scheme, as is the case here, that information assumes a public aspect.” M.H., 648 F.3d at 1077. The rule distilled from Donovan and Marchetti is that records required to be created under an otherwise valid regulatory regime necessarily have “public aspects” for purposes of the required records exception to the Fifth Amendment production privilege. A constitutionally infirm statute cannot recharacterize private information as public. However, information that a statute lawfully requires a person to record is legally distinct from information that no statute lawfully requires anyone to record. This distinction is what the “public aspects” prong of the required records doctrine recognizes. The record need not be ‘public’ in that anyone can examine or copy it at any time; it need only be lawfully required to be kept. 26 Doe’s argument that the exception applies only in areas in which there are already “substantive restrictions” in place is unpersuasive. “If the witness’s argument were correct, then Congress would be prohibited from imposing the least regulatory burden necessary; it would instead be required to supplement a reporting or recordkeeping scheme with additional and unnecessary ‘substantive restrictions’ for the sole purpose of upholding its record keeping and reporting requirements.” Grand Jury Subpoena, 696 F.3d at 436. It is enough that Congress could prohibit an activity to permit it to validly require records to be kept; it need not actively prohibit – or otherwise significantly restrict – possession of foreign bank accounts to give force to its recordkeeping requirements. The BSA is an otherwise‐valid regulatory scheme that lawfully requires beneficiaries of foreign bank accounts to retain records containing the basic information about their accounts. 31 C.F.R. § 1010.420. This information, required by lawful statute, has the “public aspects” that make it potentially subject to a grand jury subpoena in a case where a witness could assert the Fifth Amendment privilege to shield more distinctly private information. The “required records” exception to the privilege therefore applies in this case.