Opinion ID: 508924
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Doe's Claims for Equitable Relief

Text: 18 Does premises his request for equitable relief not only on the VA's violation of the Privacy Act, as incorporated into the Veterans' Records Statute, but also on the VA's and U.S. Attorney's alleged violations of a number of Doe's statutory or constitutional rights. We conclude that the Privacy Act does not by itself authorize the injunctive relief sought by Doe, and that none of the additional statutory claims asserted by Doe support his claim for relief. However, we conclude that Doe is entitled under the Administrative Procedure Act to a declaration of his right to the partial invalidation of a VA regulation which is squarely contradicted by Doe II. Accordingly, in line with the principle that courts should avoid reaching constitutional claims unless necessary to resolution, we withhold judgment on Doe's claims based upon the fourth amendment and the penumbral right to privacy, and vacate the district court's judgments on those issues. 19
20 The district court concluded that the Privacy Act does not authorize entry of injunctive relief requiring return of the medical records to Doe, exclusion of that information from the grand jury, or a ban on disclosure by the U.S. Attorney and his staff. See District Court Opinion at 633-34. We agree. The Act's subsection on civil remedies authorizes entry of injunctive relief in only two specific situations. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(g)(2)(A) (authorizing courts to order agencies to amend an individual's record); 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(g)(2)(B) (authorizing entry of reasonable attorney's fees). In so doing, as we have held, the Act precludes other forms of declaratory and injunctive relief, including the orders sought by Doe. See, e.g., Hastings v. Judicial Conference of the United States, 770 F.2d 1093, 1104 (D.C.Cir.1985), cert. denied, 477 U.S. 904, 106 S.Ct. 3273, 91 L.Ed.2d 563 (1986); see also id. (citing cases from other circuits reaching same conclusion). 21
22 We next evaluate Doe's claims that he is entitled to equitable relief based upon a number of statutes concerned either with safeguarding individuals' privacy or guaranteeing prosecutorial regularity. 23 Turning first to Doe's contention that the issuance of the grand jury subpoena constituted an abuse of compulsory process, we agree with the district court that this claim affords no basis for relief. See District Court Opinion at 630-631. Doe forswears reliance on the common law tort of abuse of process, see Brief for Appellant at 22, arguing instead that in light of the protections encoded within the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, 42 U.S.C. Secs. 2000aa et seq. (1982), and guidelines promulgated thereunder, see 28 C.F.R. Secs. 59.1-59.6 (1986), the acquisition of his medical records was abusive and unlawful. That statute was passed in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Zurcher v. Stanford Daily, 436 U.S. 547, 98 S.Ct. 1970, 56 L.Ed.2d 525 (1978), holding that the First Amendment did not provide the press with any constitutional protection against police searches. It seeks to regulate searches and seizures of materials possessed by a person with the purpose of disseminating them to the public through some form of public communication. See, e.g., 42 U.S.C. Sec. 2000aa(a); see also S.Rep. No. 874, 96th Cong., 2d Sess. 4, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, pp. 3950, 3951 (hereinafter Senate Report). 24 We find the Act and the regulations thereunder inapposite to Doe's claim, for two reasons. First, as the district court observed, the Act by its own terms restricts only searches and seizures, not subpoenas. In fact, the Act specifically endorses the use of subpoenas as a means of lessen[ing] greatly the threat otherwise pose[d] to the vigorous exercise of First Amendment rights by searches and seizures. Senate Report at 4-5, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, p. 3951; see also id. at 11, U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1980, pp. 3957-58 (stating that only limited exceptions exist to the preference for reliance upon subpoenas over mere search warrants). Second, as is suggested by the fact that the Act was prompted by the first amendment case of Zurcher, see id. at 4, U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1980, p. 3950, the Act affords protection only to materials held for the purpose of dissemination to the public, a category into which Doe's medical records do not fall. The Senate Report stated: 25 In order to qualify for the statute's protections, the materials must be possessed in connection with a purpose of disseminating some form of public communication. Materials which are prepared or collected for other purposes, are not protected. Thus, business records or reports which are required to be filed with government agencies would not be protected. 26 Id. at 10, U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1980, pp. 3950-3951. 7 27 Doe's attempt to ground the equitable relief he seeks upon the physician-patient privilege encoded in D.C. Code Sec. 14-307(a) is also misplaced. That provision states: 28 In the Federal courts in the District of Columbia and District of Columbia courts a physician or surgeon or mental health professional as defined by the District of Columbia Mental Health Information Act of 1978 (D.C.Code, sec. 6-1611), may not be permitted, without the consent of the person afflicted, or of his legal representative, to disclose any information, confidential in its nature, that he has acquired in attending a client in a professional capacity and that was necessary to enable him to act in that capacity, whether the information was obtained from the client or from his family or from the person or persons in charge of him. 29 The district court concluded that Sec. 14-307 is inapplicable to the VA's release to the U.S. Attorney's Office of Doe's medical records, interpreting the provision as creating a mere in-court evidentiary privilege. We agree. Section 14-307(a) is situated in that portion of the D.C. Code setting forth evidentiary rules governing the judicial setting, and specifically within the Code subsection entitled, Competency of Witnesses. Moreover, by its own terms, the physician-patient provision applies only to disclosures in the Federal courts. There is no evidence that this provision was intended to create more than an evidentiary rule or to establish a cause of action or a broader right enforceable in out-of-court settings. This finding of a limited privilege applicable only in the judicial context accords with the interpretations of Sec. 14-307 proffered by District of Columbia courts and federal district courts in this circuit. See, e.g., Logan v. District of Columbia, 447 F.Supp. 1328, 1335 (D.D.C.1978); Vassiliades v. Garfinckel's, 492 A.2d 580, 591 (D.C.App.1985). 30 Nor can we accept Doe's argument that a separate District of Columbia law, the District of Columbia Mental Health Information Act, D.C.Code Sec. 6-2001-to-2062, either independently or in conjunction with Sec. 14-307 extends the scope of the physician-patient privilege so as to bar the disclosure occurring in this case. That enactment provides that no mental health professional, mental health facility, data collector or employeee or agent of a mental health facility or data collector shall disclose or permit the disclosure of mental health information to any person, including an employer. D.C. Code Sec. 6-2002(a). Despite the seeming facial applicability of this enactment, we agree with the district court that it confers no rights upon Doe. Insofar as the Act purports to regulate the disclosure rules governing information held by the VA, it is squarely preempted by the federal Veterans' Records Statute, an enactment which plainly was designed to occupy the field of rules governing disclosure of veterans' records. On this point, we adopt in its entirety the reasoning of the district court opinion, which stated: 31 A review of the Veterans' Records Statute reveals that it establishes a comprehensive scheme to regulate the disclosure of veterans' records. As supplemented by the Privacy Act, the Veterans' Records Statute provides carefully crafted rules and procedures regulating disclosure of records, exceptions and limitations, and civil and criminal penalties for specific violations. See generally 38 U.S.C. Secs. 3301-02; 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552(a). There is no suggestion that Congress intended to permit local or state laws to impose additional requirements and penalties upon the disclosure process. The Court thus concludes that the Veterans' Records Statute, complete as it is in every detail, was intended to provide the whole and exclusive law regarding disclosure of VA records. 32 The Veterans' Records Statute also is part of a field of law in which the federal interest is clearly dominant. Congress' power to regulate veterans' affairs is directly derived from its share of the federal government's constitutional war powers. Exclusive federal regulation of disclosure of veterans' records thus does not encroach upon an area of traditional state regulation. Accordingly, the congressional power to regulate disclosure of veterans' records is of such a nature that the Constitution permits only of one uniform national system. 33 District Court Opinion at 629-30 (citations and footnotes omitted). 34 Even if the federal enactment did not occupy the regulatory field so as to leave no room for local regulation, the doctrine of federal preemption would still prevent courts from applying the D.C. Mental Health Information Act so as to bar release of federally held records. This is so because imposing such a ban could substantially impede federal activities or directly place 'a prohibition on the federal government,'  a result forbidden by the Supremacy Clause in the absence of congressional acceptance of the state or local regulation. See, e.g., Don't Tear It Down, Inc. v. Pennsylvania Avenue Corp., 642 F.2d 527, 535 (D.C.Cir.1980) (quoting Hancock v. Train, 426 U.S. 167, 180, 96 S.Ct. 2006, 2013, 48 L.Ed.2d 555 (1976)). Nor is the effect of applying this D.C. enactment to expand Doe's rights vis-a-vis the VA so incidental or nonburdensome to escape the ban on uninvited burdens upon federal activities. Violation of the local enactment carries civil and criminal penalties. See D.C.Code Secs. 6-2061--6-2062. We therefore agree with the district court that Doe cannot premise his request for equitable relief upon this enactment. 35
36 We turn, finally, to evaluate under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. Sec. 551 et seq., Doe's claims for equitable relief. 8 Section 10(a) of the APA provides that [a] person suffering legal wrong because of agency action, or adversely affected or aggrieved by agency action ..., is entitled to judicial review thereof. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 702. Section 10(e), in turn, provides that a reviewing court shall hold unlawful and set aside agency action, findings, and conclusions found to be ... arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2)(A); see also Chrysler Corp. v. Brown, 441 U.S. 281, 317-19, 99 S.Ct. 1705, 1725-27, 60 L.Ed.2d 208 (1979) (holding that grant of injunctive relief to prevent violations of Trade Secrets Act could rest on Sec. 10(a) of the APA even though the underlying enactment gave rise to no private right of action for damages). 37 This clearly is a case of agency action not in accordance with law within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. Sec. 706(2): for the reasons stated in Doe II and adopted by the district court, the disclosure of Doe's psychiatric records violated the Veterans' Records Statute, as amended by the Privacy Act. The issue thus becomes whether a injunctive relief is warranted prohibiting the VA from disseminating Doe's clinical psychiatric files. 38 At present, two copies of Doe's medical records exist. The original is kept by the VA; a duplicate is held by the district court under seal, protected from disclosure by the sealed-records provisions of Fed.R.Civ.P. 26(c) and Fed.R.Crim.P. 6(e). The VA, however, has not pledged not to disclose Doe's medical records in the future. Quite the contrary: under a regulation adopted by the VA in 1982 shortly after the initiation of this case, the VA specifically identified the disclosure of information pursuant to grand jury subpoenas as a routine use exempted from Privacy Act coverage under that statute's routine use exclusion. See 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(b)(3). Routine Use 23 states: 39 Any information in this system may be disclosed to a federal grand jury, a Federal Court or a party in litigation or a Federal Agency or party to an administrative proceeding being conducted by a Federal Agency, in order for the VA to respond to and comply with the issuance of a federal subpoena. 40 47 Fed.Reg. 51,841 (1982). 41 Doe II clearly establishes Doe's right not to have the highly personal information and thoughts he has shared with his VA physicians released by the VA in response to a grand jury subpoena. He is clearly entitled to declaratory relief to this effect. For similar reasons, we agree with Doe that Routine Use 23 is invalid to the extent that it authorizes disclosures pursuant to grand jury subpoenas. The Privacy Act defines a routine use as the use of such record for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which it is collected. 5 U.S.C. Sec. 552a(a)(7). It is by now well-established that agencies covered by the Privacy Act may not utilize the routine use exception to circumvent the mandates of the Privacy Act. See, e.g., Wisdom v. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 713 F.2d 422, 424 (8th Cir.1983), cert. denied, 465 U.S. 1021, 104 S.Ct. 1272, 79 L.Ed.2d 678 (1983) (HUD certainly could not ignore the dictates of the Privacy Act in promulgating regulations); Parks v. United States Internal Revenue Service, 618 F.2d 677, 681 (10th Cir.1980); see also Andrews v. Veterans' Administration of the United States, 613 F.Supp. 1404, 1413 (D.Wyo.1985) (Any regulations enacted under the Privacy Act must be consistent with its purposes, and inconsistent regulations are invalid, and will not justify release of covered information); cf. Tijerina v. Walters, 821 F.2d 789, 795 (D.C.Cir.1987) (construing provisions of Privacy Act allowing agencies to exempt themselves from Act's civil remedies section to extend only so far as they do not contravene the language of the Act and the purpose behind the general exemptions provision). 42 In Doe II, we held squarely that a grand jury subpoena did not qualify as an order of the court so as to come within the exception to the Privacy Act's prohibition upon the disclosure of confidential medical records. Our holding was based in part on the interpretation given similar language in other statutes; we reasoned that Congress consciously chose to employ the 'order' language in the Privacy Act rather than the more expensive 'process' language in the Veterans' Records Statute. See 779 F.2d at 82-83. But we also relied in Doe II on the purpose and the structure of the [Privacy] Act, finding that [i]n this case, a fair reading of the statute and its purpose leads to the definite conclusion that Congress did not intend to allow disclosure pursuant to a typical grand jury subpoena. Id. at 84. We pointed out that [t]o read the 'order of the court' language as permitting disclosure pursuant to a subpoena, would create a gaping hole in the overall scheme of the Privacy Act. We stated: 43 One of Congress' explicit goals in enacting the Privacy Act was to preclude overzealous investigators from running roughshod over an individual's privacy, and the grand jury subpoena simply does not safeguard against that danger. 44 Id. 45 Given that our refusal to permit grand jury subpoenas to penetrate the Privacy Act barrier against disclosure of confidential medical records was based on a combination of congressional purpose and the structural integrity of the Privacy Act, it is inconceivable that the agency could circumvent it merely by taking the routine use route. The routine use contemplated here would simply not be for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for which the record was collected in light of our holding and rationale in Doe II. The records can be disclosed only if they come within a legitimate exception to the Privacy Act, e.g., a written request by the head of another agency or an authentic order of the court. We must therefore conclude that Routine Use 23 is invalid insofar as it would permit routine disclosure pursuant to a grand jury subpoena alone. 46 Having concluded that Doe is entitled to declaratory relief against future VA disclosure unauthorized by the Veterans' Records Statute, and having invalidated the VA's routine use regulation insofar as it is inconsistent with the interpretation of that statute offered in Doe II, we believe it unnecessary to award Doe additional injunctive relief. See United States v. W.T. Grant Co., 345 U.S. 629, 633, 73 S.Ct. 894, 897, 97 L.Ed. 1303 (1953). Given that (with the exception of the copy held by the district court) the VA alone possesses Doe's medical records, we also see no need to issue an injunction on his behalf against the U.S. Attorney's office. 47
48 We are left then with Doe's requests for equitable relief based upon the fourth amendment and the right to privacy. 9 Having concluded that Doe is entitled to declaratory relief under the APA, however, we find it unnecessary to reach these constitutional grounds. See Hagans v. Lavine, 415 U.S. 528, 543, 94 S.Ct. 1372, 1382, 39 L.Ed.2d 577 (1974); see also Doe II, 779 F.2d at 89 (citing cases counseling abstention from adjudicating constitutional claims if relief has already been granted on statutory grounds). Accordingly, we vacate the district court's judgment on these issues.