Court Opinion

ID: 9486099
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:37:53.518014+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:31.731076
License: Public Domain

RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
“Ask, and ye shall receive,” so long as ye happen to be the National Association of Letter Carriers asking for information about the private lives of 240,000 Postal Service employees, 60,000 of whom are not even union members. No matter that the Letter Carriers utterly failed to show even the slightest need for this sensitive data. Whatever the union wants the union gets. It is no small wonder that my colleagues sustain this wholesale invasion of privacy on the basis of a regulation issued under — of all things — the Privacy Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b).
In a complicated explanation, Judge Silber-man deems it all important that the National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., governs the Postal Service’s labor-management relations. It is fair to ask what this has to do with the Privacy Act. The National Labor Relations Act governs, to be sure, but only “to the extent not inconsistent with provisions of [title 39],” 39 U.S.C. § 1209(a). And one of those title 39 provisions renders the Postal Service subject to the Privacy Act. 39 U.S.C. § 410(b)(1). Regardless of what the union demands, or what collective bargaining entails, the Postal Service remains subject to the Privacy Act to the same extent as other federal agencies. National Labor Relations Act or not, the Postal Service cannot enter into agreements requiring it to violate the Privacy Act. See Local 2047, Am. Fed’n of Gov’t Employees, 573 F.2d 184, 186 (4th Cir.1978); Andrews v. Veterans Admin., 613 F.Supp. 1404, 1413 (D.Wyo.1985).
“No agency,” the Privacy Act proclaims, “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.... ” 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). To this there is an exception for “routine” uses, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b)(3), that is, a use “compatible with the purposes for which [the information] is collected” (5 U.S.C. § 552a(a)(7)) and within the terms of a notice in the Federal Register describing the use and its purpose, 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(4)(D). The Postal Service’s Routine Use M states:
Pursuant to the National Labor Relations Act, records from this system may be furnished to a labor organization when needed by that organization to perform properly its duties as collective bargaining representative of postal employees in an appropriate bargaining unit.
54 Fed.Reg. 43,655 (1989).
The Postal Service interposed the Privacy Act as its reason for refusing to comply with the arbitrator’s ruling described in Judge Silberman’s opinion. The Privacy Act would stand in the way unless Routine Use M validly permitted disclosure. Routine Use M is a federal regulation promulgated under a federal statute. As with any other provision of federal law, the court had a duty to interpret it. The principal question for the court was: ‘What does this regulation mean?” Judge Silberman sets out to answer this question, not by interpreting Routine Use M, but by looking about to see if someone else had already performed the task. This mode of decision-making is doubtless born of habit. Rather than parse the language of a statute or a regulation, it is easier to bestow judicial *149deference on another’s interpretation. Unfortunately, my colleague returns empty-handed from his search for an official Postal Service construction of Routine Use M. So he gives his blessing to the view of an arbitrator, who said the union gets whatever it wants. “The decision as to what data is needed to prepare the Union’s bargaining proposals,” the arbitrator wrote, “is one that only the Union can make. If it asserts that it needs this data for that purpose, and there is no reason to conclude that the assertion is not truthful, that is enough to satisfy the mandate of [the collective bargaining agreement.]”
Put aside the fact that the arbitrator did not construe the Routine Use M regulation, indeed did not even purport to do so. Forget that the arbitrator said not a word about the Privacy Act or the protection of employee privacy. Ignore that if the arbitrator thought for a moment he was doing anything more than construing a contract, he might have taken other considerations into account. Disregard our decision in FLRA v. United States Dep’t of the Treasury, 884 F.2d 1446, 1456 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1055, 110 S.Ct. 863, 864, 107 L.Ed.2d 947, 948 (1990), refusing to defer even to the Federal Labor Relations Authority’s interpretation of an agency’s routine use regulation. Overlook all these defects in my colleagues’ analyses, and accept their fictional account of what the Postal Service agreed to with respect to the Privacy Act when it entered into the contract. Judge Silberman’s op. at 142-43; Judge Williams’ op. at 147. Assume, in other words, that my colleagues rightly read Routine Use M to mean exactly what the arbitrator said the contractual provision means. The consequence is that an independent entity of the federal government has ceded— lock, stock and barrel — its statutory responsibility under the Privacy Act to preserve the confidentiality of records pertaining to individuals. And it'has ceded this responsibility to a third party, the union, who may obtain this private data for any reason or no reason, and use it for whatever purposes it deems fit.
If this is the meaning of Routine Use M, and my colleagues say it is, then in my view the Postal Service has violated the Privacy Act, or more accurately, has exceeded its authority to promulgate routine use regulations under the Act. The Privacy Act is supposed to ensure that individual rights are at least considered and weighed whenever an agency uses or disseminates information. Doe v. DiGenova, 779 F.2d 74, 84 (D.C.Cir.1985). If an individual’s interest in maintaining his or her privacy can be cast aside just because someone wants to know where they live, or how old they are, or if they suffer from any handicaps, or if they are saving money, then the Privacy Act stands for nothing. No agency may promulgate a routine use regulation “to circumvent the mandates of the Privacy Act.” Doe v. Stephens, 851 F.2d 1457, 1466 (D.C.Cir.1988). Agencies must narrowly define routine uses to “permit disclosure only when justified by a substantial public interest.” Andrews, 613 F.Supp. at 1413. Yet as my colleagues have defined Routine Use M, it serves no “public interest,” let alone a substantial one. There is “no principle of national labor policy,” the Supreme Court held in Detroit Edison Co. v. NLRB, 440 U.S. 301, 315, 99 S.Ct. 1123, 1131, 59 L.Ed.2d 333 (1979), that entitles a union, merely upon demand, to obtain confidential information about employees from an employer. And there is certainly no principle derived from the Privacy Act that would tolerate anything of the sort. See Treasury, 884 F.2d at 1457 (R.B. Ginsburg, J., concurring).
Of course the Postal Service’s regulation cannot possibly mean what my colleagues say. The meaning of Routine Use M is no great mystery. The Supreme Court used almost the same words in the opening sentence of Detroit Edison: “The duty to bargain collectively, imposed upon an employer by § 8(a)(5) of the National Labor Relations Act, includes a duty to provide relevant information needed by a labor union for the proper performance of its duties as the employees’ bargaining representative.” 440 U.S. at 303, 99 S.Ct. at 1125. The Court then explained the import of those words. Unlike the arbitrator’s decision on which my colleagues rely, Detroit Edison establishes that a union’s need and a union’s want are not the same. “A union’s bare assertion that it *150needs the information” is not enough; and its status as the collective bargaining agent does not, in itself, entitle the union to pry into the private lives of those it represents. Id. at 314, 99 S.Ct. at 1131; Andrews, 613 F.Supp. at 1413. To receive private information about employees, the union must demonstrate a particularized need, related to its collective bargaining responsibilities. Detroit Edison, 440 U.S. at 314-15, 99 S.Ct. at 1131; see also NLRB v. Truitt Mfg. Co., 351 U.S. 149, 153-54, 76 S.Ct. 753, 756, 100 L.Ed. 1027 (1956); NLRB v. FLRA 952 F.2d 523, 531 (D.C.Cir.1992). Even then, legitimate interests in confidentiality must be respected by tailoring the form of the disclosure. Detroit Edison, 440 U.S. at 318-19, 99 S.Ct. at 1133.
In FLRA v. Treasury we interpreted another agency’s routine use regulation nearly identical to the Postal Service’s. Our decision was much the same as the Supreme Court’s in Detroit Edison. A reasonable interpretation of the regulation, we held, was one embraced by the agency: private information is not necessary to a union’s collective bargaining duties if the union has alternate means of accomplishing its goals. Treasury, 884 F.2d at 1456.
Given a choice between, on the one hand, Detroit Edison and FLRA v. Treasury, and, on the other hand, the arbitrator’s raling in this case, my colleagues decide to go with the arbitrator. I prefer the reasoning of the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit. Under Detroit Edison and Treasury, the union’s request should be rejected. The union has steadfastly refused to establish its need for this data and it has flatly rejected the Postal Service’s offer of a reasonable alternative. I therefore respectfully dissent.