Court Opinion

ID: 9769943
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 15:08:52.585022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:09.347873
License: Public Domain

RIPPLE, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I agree with the majority opinion that the Village of Palatine (‘Village”) disclosed, within the meaning of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act (“DPPA”), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2721-2725, Mr. Senne’s personal information. I respectfully disagree, however, that the Village’s actions constitute a statutory exemption under the DPPA. In my view, the Village has violated the DPPA through excessive disclosure of personal information on parking tickets. In enacting the DPPA, Congress was acutely aware of the need to balance between the privacy/security interests of an individual and the government’s legitimate use of private information.1 The majority opinion does not, in my view, reflect the Congressional judgment in this respect. Therefore, with great respect for the thoughtful analysis of my colleagues, I must respectfully dissent.
The Village submits that placing parking tickets containing extensive personal information from the files of the Department of Motor Vehicles on illegally parked vehicles falls within two permissible uses under the DPPA. In § 2721(b), the DPPA provides that “[personal information ... may be disclosed ... [f]or use by any ... law enforcement agency, in carrying out its functions,” 18 U.S.C. § 2721(b)(1), and “[f]or use in connection with any ... administrative ... proceeding in any Federal, State, or local court ... including the service of process,” 18 U.S.C. § 2721(b)(4). The majority opinion focuses solely on the permissible use of personal information to serve process. I believe, however, that neither permissible use is applicable.
The majority opinion is correct that the issuance of a parking ticket is within the function of a law enforcement agency and that such an issuance begins an administrative proceeding under Illinois law. See *926625 ILCS 5/11-208.3(b)(1), (b)(3). For the majority opinion, the DPPA simply does not address or regulate excessive disclosure. In its view, so long as the purpose behind the action is a permissible use listed in § 2721(b), there is apparently no limit to the disclosure that the government can undertake. Therefore, in issuing a parking ticket, the Village can publish the vehicle owner’s home address, driver’s license number, date of birth, sex and height as well as the vehicle identification number even though such information is of no consequence for the purpose of issuing the ticket: to notify the owner of the car of incurred financial liability.
The majority opinion’s interpretation frustrates, significantly, the intent of Congress. The language and structure of the statute makes clear that Congress did not intend that the statutory exceptions be divorced, logically or practically, from the purpose of the statute. Rather, the exceptions must be interpreted in a manner that is compatible with Congress’s careful attempt to balance individual privacy/security needs and the legitimate operational and administrative needs of the government. We should not ascribe to Congress the intent to sanction the publication of any and all personal information through the invocation of an exception. Rather, we should follow the manifest intent of the statute that such disclosures be limited to those that are reasonable in effectuating the purpose of that exception. The exception should not be read as permitting the release of material totally irrelevant to the governmental purpose that the exception was intended to protect. We should interpret the statute as permitting the release, through the exceptions, of only the personal information reasonably necessary to effectuate the governmental purpose set forth in the exception.2
Congress did not contemplate that the permissible uses would justify any disclosure, but only those that are reasonable in light of the permitted use. To attribute any other intent from the text or the structure of the statute is to infer that Congress deliberately intended to frustrate the very purpose of the statute. Rather, in my view, in order to preserve the integrity of the Congressional work product, the information disclosed under an exception must have a reasonable relationship to the purpose of the exception.
Mr. Senne’s parking ticket contains disclosures of personal, security-sensitive information that simply bear no reasonable relationship to the purpose of the parking ticket: to notify the owner of a car that he is financially liable for an administrative violation. There is no need to include, for the public to view, the owner’s home address, driver’s license number, date of birth, sex and height or the vehicle identification number. Indeed, we have commented that even names are unnecessary for parking tickets, as “[a] license [plate] number uniquely identifies the person.” Saukstelis v. City of Chicago, 932 F.2d *9271171, 1174 (7th Cir.1991). In fact, having a license plate number may be more effective than having a name. Id. (“Parking tickets effectively say: ‘Chicago, Plaintiff, versus Owner of the vehicle with License No. xxxx, Defendant.’ That identifies the parties to the suit even better than a name does. Only one person matches a given license plate, while there are many ‘John Smiths’. A name is just a way of identifying a person; the name and the person are not a joint ‘thing’.”).
It is important to note, therefore, the stark difference between the balance struck by Congress in enacting the exceptions to the general mandate of the statute and the balance upon which the majority focuses in this opinion. Congress debated and struck in its legislative work product a balance between the personal privacy/security concerns of individuals and the operational needs of the Nation’s police forces. The majority opinion, on the other hand, strikes a balance between an individual’s personal privacy/security interests and the administrative convenience of a particular police force. It largely ignores, therefore, the very problem that Congress sought to address.
The consequences of the majority’s opinion are not theoretical but real. The majority opinion facilitates the very wrongdoing that Congress intended to thwart. Under the majority’s opinion, an individual seeking to stalk or rape can go down a street where overnight parking is banned and collect the home address and personal information of women whose vehicles have been tagged and their personal information left for him to see. He can ascertain the name, exact address including the apartment number and even other information such as sex, age, height and weight pertinent to his nefarious intent. The police, in derogation of the explicit intent of Congress, effectively has done his work for him in identifying potential victims. Similarly, a public official, having gone to great lengths to protect himself and his family from the risk of violence that unfortunately every public official must accept, must now bear the risk that an expired parking meter violation might provide a golden opportunity for an individual intent on causing the official or his family bodily harm or death.
Notably, these scenarios mirror exactly the events, referenced in the legislative history of the DPPA, that motivated its introduction and passage:
In California, actress Rebecca Schaeffer was brutally murdered in the doorway of her Los Angeles apartment by a man who had obtained her [unlisted] home address from [California’s] DMV.
[A] 31-year-old man copied down the license plate numbers of five women in their early twenties, obtained their home address from the DMV and then sent them threatening letters at home.
139 Cong. Rec. S15762 (daily ed. Nov. 16, 1993) (statement of Sen. Boxer, sponsor of the DPPA); see also Lake v. Neal, 585 F.3d 1059, 1060 (7th Cir.2009), cert. denied, - U.S. -, 130 S.Ct. 3296, 176 L.Ed.2d 1187 (2010). Representative Goss, co-sponsor of the DPPA, summed up “the intent of the bill” as “simple and straightforward: We want to stop stalkers from obtaining the names and address of their prey before another tragedy occurs.” 140 Cong. Rec. H2527 (daily ed. Apr. 20, 1994) (emphasis added); see id. (statement of Rep. Morelia) (“Allowing a government agency to aid stalkers in locating those they are harassing is untenable.”). Representative Moran, sponsor of the DPPA, also commented, “Think about that. A total stranger can obtain personal information about you without knowing anything more about you than your license plate *928number and you are helpless to stop it.” Id. at H2522.
Here, of course, the Village’s police department expedites the malefactor’s task. He need not go to the trouble of going to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get all the information he wants; the police readily have supplied it. Congress in enacting the DPPA was motivated specifically by how disclosure of personal information in driving records, in particular home addresses, could enable criminal activity. With this decision, the court frustrates the very intent and purpose of Congress.
Finally, it should be noted that today’s decision does not require that police departments print all the personal information on a parking ticket that the Village elected to print on the ticket here. Indeed, it appears from the representations of counsel that at least some sophisticated police departments have taken a more restrained approach and have recognized the immense public safety risk involved in the practice that the court sanctions here as a matter of federal law. Police departments that are more sensitive to public safety have every right to mandate more sensible solutions, and the better departments will. The risk here is that less sophisticated police departments, more prone to bureaucratic convenience than public safety concerns, will take shelter in today’s decision, and, consequently, their communities will incur horrendous crimes of violence that would not otherwise have occurred.
Accordingly, with great respect for the contrary view expressed in the majority opinion, I concur in part and dissent in part from the judgment of the court.

. See 140 Cong. Rec. H2522 (daily ed. Apr. 20, 1994) (statement of Rep. Moran, sponsor of the DPPA) ("[The DPPA] strikes a critical balance between an individual's fundamental right to privacy and safety and the legitimate governmental and business needs for this information.”); id. at H2526 (statement of Rep. Goss, co-sponsor of the DPPA) ("I believe the [DPPA] adequately balances the circumstances where access to the DMV information is justified relative to the very real concern for privacy protection.").

. In discussing the permissible uses listed under § 2721(b), Senator Harkin, co-sponsor of the DPPA, considered the very issue of excessive disclosure, commenting that:
In appropriate circumstances law enforcement agencies may reasonably determine that disclosure of this private information to a citizen or group of citizens will assist in carrying out the function of the agency. In my view, section [2721(b)] authorizes such disclosures.
However, this exception is not a gaping loophole in the law. A false representation that this information will be used for law enforcement purposes would be punishable. ...
139 Cong. Rec. S15962 (daily ed. Nov. 17, 1993) (emphasis added).