Court Opinion

ID: 9473664
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:36:07.975883+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:43:40.089272
License: Public Domain

FERGUSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Unt wrote a letter to the Air Force in which he blew the whistle on his employer, The Aerospace Corp., a defense contractor. The Air Force received Unt’s letter and promptly revealed it to the Aerospace Corp. without Unt’s permission. Aerospace then fired him. The majority holds that despite the Air Force’s undisputed ability to receive, maintain, retrieve, and reveal Unt’s letter, which discloses that Unt is a whistle-blower, to the very employer about which Unt was complaining, Unt’s claim fails because the letter was not “about” Unt.
I dissent from this holding in Part 11(B) of the opinion. I concur in Part I because it upholds the district court’s finding of no discrimination, but I disagree with the dicta in that portion that might undermine federal protection for an employee’s right to blow the whistle on his employer. I concur in Part 11(A) of the opinion, but I disagree with its dicta concerning the nature of Unt’s letter.
The plain language of the Act encompasses Unt’s letter. Section 552a(b) provides: “No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains.” The Privacy Act’s definition includes Unt’s letter within its definitions of both “record” and “system of records.” The majority did not discuss both parts of the statute because it held that the first requirement precluded coverage. Because I read the Act as encompassing Unt’s letter, I address each of the Act’s requirements — of a “record” and of a “system of records” — in turn.
*1450I.
The Privacy Act defines “record” as any item, collection, or grouping of information about an individual that is maintained by an agency, including, but not limited to, his education, financial transactions, medical history, and criminal or employment history and that contains his name, or the identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual, such as a finger or voice print or a photograph.
5 U.S.C. § 552a(a)(4). No one seriously disputes that Unt’s letter is an “item,” or that it contains his hand-signed name. Instead, the majority claims this item is not “about” Unt because it is “about” Aerospace. This interpretation is illogical, contrary to the legislative intent, and defies the ease laws’ consistent concern with the actual effect of a record on a person’s employment when assessing that record’s nature or subject.
The Privacy Act nowhere states that an item must be exclusively about the individual protected. Thus, the majority errs when it reasons that the letter is about Aerospace, and, therefore, it is not about Unt. The syllogism is incomplete because the Act fails to supply the necessary “exclusivity” premise. The majority’s conclusion is invalid. The majority’s holding that this letter is not an item will only prompt government agencies to maintain items with several bits of information about different subjects to evade this judicially imposed exclusivity requirement.
The legislative history also indicates that the Act encompasses an item like Unt’s letter within its proscriptions against disclosure. Congress was concerned with the nature of the information conveyed by a record in assessing whether a record reflected adversely upon an individual:
The reference to personal characteristics does not exclude a file that contains only names and is headed by a general label for a category of records. If the heading or the nature of the file represents a judgment on the individual or a subjective view, then that file would be subject to the bill____ Thus it could cover a list which contained names only but which, by its nature, conveyed something detrimental or threatening to the reputation, rights, benefits or privileges or qualification of the individual simply by reason of being listed on it.
P.L. 93-579, 1974 U.S.Code Cong. & Ad. News 6916, 6993 (emphasis supplied). Unt’s letter acquired such a detrimental nature upon disclosure to his employer — on whom Unt blew the whistle. It was, therefore, about Unt in a very real and threatening sense, although it turned out to be also about Aerospace in an immaterial sense.
The legislative history also describes broadly the records covered by the Act:
Rather than focus on a single record or subject file, the Committee has adopted an approach focused on the total information system which includes all phases of information collection, storage, handling, processing dessimination [sic] and transfer____ The bill thus is directed to the overall programs and policies of executive branch departments and agencies including the design, development, and management of an information system, as well as to the maintenance of one particular file on an individual, or the gathering of information on one data subject.
Id. (emphasis supplied). The Act covers all aspects of information management, from the systems level down to the single data subject. Its coverage is therefore not limited to items on single subjects, as the majority holds. The Act was intended to cover items such as Unt’s letter, even though they cover two data subjects.1
II.
The Act also defines “system of records”:
*1451[T]he term “system of records” means a group of any records under the control of any agency from which information is retrieved by the name of the individual or by some identifying number, symbol, or other identifying particular assigned to the individual.
5 U.S.C. §§ 552a(a)(5).
Unt’s letter and the information it contained — that he turned in his defense employer — was retrievable; it was retrieved and disclosed. Unt’s letter was thus a record within a system of records, despite the absence of computer age technology in its filing, retrieval and disclosure.
Our circuit has not yet addressed the question of what constitutes a “record which is contained in a system of records,” but several other courts have. Their decisions about whether the claims fall within section 552a are based on concerns similar to those expressed by the legislature. The courts have shown concern with the nature of the record and the adverse effect of disclosure, particularly on employment decisions, in determining whether the record warranted the Act’s protections. These decisions concerning the “system of records” requirement thus also conflict with the majority’s failure to assess whether this record was “about” Unt by noting the real effect that this letter’s disclosure had upon Unt.
In Chapman v. NASA, 682 F.2d 526 (5th Cir.1982), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 105 S.Ct. 517, 83 L.Ed.2d 406 (1984), NASA discharged Chapman. Chapman’s immediate supervisor kept notes about Chapman, his job performance, and summaries of meetings, which were ultimately placed in Chapman’s administrative file. The court held that these memos were subject to the Privacy Act. In distinguishing between private memory-refreshers, which are not subject to the Act, and records, which are, the court held: “[W]hen notes bear negatively on a worker’s employment status or situation, they must be handled in a manner consistent with the letter and spirit of the Privacy Act.” 682 F.2d at 529. The notes on Chapman, like the letter from Unt, “played a part in [his] discharge.” 682 F.2d at 527. Thus,
When Phinney tendered his personal notes to Hall, for use by NASA in proceedings looking to the discharge of Chapman, the private aspect of the notes evanesced and they became subject to the requirements of the Privacy Act.
682 F.2d at 529. The evil of disclosure of a communication originally intended to be private which then adversely affects the complainant’s employment, upon which the Chapman court based its decision, is present in Unt’s case. His letter, like the Chapman notes, falls within the Privacy Act’s protections.
In Olberding v. United States Department of Defense, Department of the Army, 709 F.2d 621 (8th Cir.1983), army officers disclosed that Olberding had undergone psychiatric testing and that no disorders or illness had been found. The court found no violation of the Privacy Act, because the disclosed information was not disclosure “resulting from a retrieval of the information initially and directly from the record contained in the system of records.” 709 F.2d at 622 (emphasis supplied). Rather, the information was retrieved from “the personal knowledge of the individual.” Id. Thus, the court’s emphasis in denying an actionable Privacy Act claim was upon the retrievability. Unt’s letter was physically retrieved from the briefcase in which it was carried, and turned over to The Aerospace Corp. The evil of retrieval from stored files, with which the Oblerding court expressed concern, is thus present in Unt’s case. Cf. King v. Califano, 471 F.Supp. 180 (D.D.C. 1979) (personal opinion disclosed from individual’s memory not a disclosure of a record within meaning of Privacy Act); Doyle v. Behan, 670 F.2d 535 (5th Cir.1982) (same).
In Boyd v. Secretary of the Navy, 709 F.2d 684 (11th Cir.1983), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 709, 79 L.Ed.2d 173 (1984), the Navy employed Boyd. Boyd claimed that the Navy refused him access to his own files, destroyed memoranda to *1452which he should have been granted access, and failed to maintain an accurate and timely record about him. The court held that the memoranda were records because they reflected poorly on some characteristic of Boyd. They were not, however, maintained within a system of records, in part because:
The memorandum in question ... was not used in making any decisions concerning Boyd’s employment status. As such, it was merely a memory aid of the superiors who attended the meeting with Boyd.
Id. at 686-87. Unt alleges that the letter was used to make a decision about his employment status. The evil of using officially maintained information to affect adversely employment decisions, with which the Boyd court expressed concern, is therefore also present in Unt’s case.
Several district court cases that have declined to characterize written material as records within a system of records have turned on factors not present in Unt’s claim. See Savarese v. United States Department of Health, 479 F.Supp. 304, 307 (N.D.Ga.1979) (disclosed information was not retrievable by name or name-related identifier; Unt’s letter, though only in a briefcase, was retrieved because it bore his name), aff'd, 620 F.2d 298 (5th Cir.1980), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 1078, 101 S.Ct. 858, 66 L.Ed.2d 801 (1981); Smiertka v. United States Department of Treasury, 447 F.Supp. 221 (D.D.C.1978) (disclosed information not retrievable by plaintiff’s name, but “by someone else’s identifier, in particular the name of the agency investigator who prepared them”), vacated and remanded on other grounds, 604 F.2d 698 (D.C.Cir.1979). They are therefore unpersuasive in Unt’s case.
Admittedly, a federal regulation indicates that Unt’s claim might not be actionable. That regulation, however, is based on reasons entirely different from those of the majority. That regulation also conflicts with the Act’s language and purpose. Thirty-two C.F.R. § 806b.3(p) defines “system of records” as:
Any group of records from which personal information is retrieved by the name of an individual or by some personal identifier, such as the individual’s Social Security Number (SSN). If such retrieval is possible but not actually done, the group does not constitute a system of records.
To the extent that this regulation undermines legislative and judicial concern with government recordkeeping of all kinds— manual and computerized, with the nature and adverse employment consequences of disclosure, and with the values of government responsibility and individual privacy, I must disagree with its definition of a system of records. The actual and threatened harm resulting from disclosure of personal information does not change with the method of retrieval.
CONCLUSION
The lesson of this regulation is: misfile personal data. The lesson of the majority's opinion is: file personal data with other data. Then, retrieving the data from wherever they were misfiled, left unfiled, or filed with other data would implicate no privacy values.
The Act itself, however, is far broader. In order to succeed under the 5 U.S.C. § 522a(b), Unt’s letter must be a “record which is contained in a system of records.” The legislature that adopted this phrase and the cases that have considered the phrase show that in determining whether a bit of information is a “record which is contained in a system of records,” it is proper to look at the nature of the record, its ability to be retrieved, and the adverse effects of disclosure — particularly upon employment decisions. Under these tests, Unt’s letter deserves the Privacy Act’s protection.

. Two other federal "whistleblowing" statutes support this conclusion about legislative intent. These two statutes, 10 U.S.C. § 1587 and 5 U.S.C. § 2302, protect federally employed whist-leblowers from adverse personnel action and thus show a broad legislative desire to protect those who blow the whistle on illegal actions that jeopardize the government’s integrity.