Opinion ID: 2448
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Legal Framework Relevant to Plaintiffs' First Amendment Claim

Text: It is a bedrock principle of First Amendment jurisprudence that `[a]ny system of prior restraints of expression... bear[s] a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity.' New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 714, 91 S.Ct. 2140, 29 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971) (quoting Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan, 372 U.S. 58, 70, 83 S.Ct. 631, 9 L.Ed.2d 584 (1963)). The CIA's requirement that current and former employees obtain Agency clearance before disseminating any material related to their employment is not, however, a system of prior restraints in the classic sense. See McGehee v. Casey, 718 F.2d 1137, 1147-48 (D.C.Cir.1983); accord John Doe, Inc. v. Mukasey, 549 F.3d 861, 871, 876 n. 12 (2d Cir.2008). As the Supreme Court has explained, when a government employee voluntarily assume[s] a duty of confidentiality, governmental restrictions on disclosure are not subject to the same stringent standards that would apply to efforts to impose restrictions on unwilling members of the public. United States v. Aguilar, 515 U.S. 593, 606, 115 S.Ct. 2357, 132 L.Ed.2d 520 (1995); see United States v. Nat'l Treasury Employees Union, 513 U.S. 454, 465-66, 115 S.Ct. 1003, 130 L.Ed.2d 964 (1995) (Congress may impose restraints on the job-related speech of public employees that would be plainly unconstitutional if applied to the public at large.); cf. John Doe, Inc. v. Mukasey, 549 F.3d at 877 (distinguishing between former CIA employees and entities that had no interaction with the Government until the Government imposed its nondisclosure requirement upon [them]). Indeed, once a government employee signs an agreement not to disclose information properly classified pursuant to executive order, that employee simply has no first amendment right to publish such information. [14] Stillman v. CIA, 319 F.3d 546, 548 (D.C.Cir.2003); see United States v. Pappas, 94 F.3d 795, 801 (2d Cir.1996) (The Government is entitled to enforce its agreements to maintain the confidentiality of classified information.); Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. v. Colby, 509 F.2d 1362, 1370 (4th Cir.1975) (holding that government employee subject to secrecy agreement has effectively relinquished his First Amendment right[] to publish classified information). This rule derives principally from Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507, 100 S.Ct. 763, 62 L.Ed.2d 704 (1980), in which the Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment challenge to the CIA's enforcement of its secrecy agreement with former employee Frank W. Snepp III, who had published a book about CIA activities in South Vietnam without submitting his manuscript for pre-publication Agency review. The Court affirmed the district court's order enjoining future breaches by Snepp and imposing a constructive trust on profits already realized from the unauthorized publication, see id. at 508-09, 100 S.Ct. 763, concluding not only that Snepp's secrecy agreement was enforceable as an entirely appropriate exercise of the CIA Director's statutory mandate to protect intelligence sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure, but also that even in the absence of an express agreement  the CIA could have acted to protect substantial government interests by imposing reasonable restrictions on employee activities that in other contexts might be protected by the First Amendment, id. at 510 n. 3, 100 S.Ct. 763 (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). The Court held that [t]he Government has a compelling interest in protecting both the secrecy of information important to our national security and the appearance of confidentiality so essential to the effective operation of our foreign intelligence service, and that [t]he agreement that Snepp signed is a reasonable means for protecting this vital interest. Id. ; see also Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 283, 309, 101 S.Ct. 2766, 69 L.Ed.2d 640 (1981) (holding that ex-CIA employee's speech intended `to expose CIA officers and agents' is clearly not protected by the Constitution). Moreover, the Court recognized the CIA's need to maintain a dependable prepublication review procedure in order to ensure in advance ... that information detrimental to national interest is not published. Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. at 513 n. 8, 100 S.Ct. 763.