Court Opinion

ID: 9480106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 07:38:33.498588+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:47:29.509703
License: Public Domain

REVERCOMB, District Judge,
dissenting:
As the majority recognizes, this court has “often applied the ‘predominant inter-nality’ test without emphasizing the words ‘rules and practices.’ ” However, the majority fails to establish by what standard it is now applying the requirement of “rules and practices” to the material in the instant case. Rather, the opinion cites a number of cases where “the requested information was typically a rule or practice in the most literal sense” and then concludes that the material at issue here is not a “rule or practice.” However, while the factual circumstances heretofore presented to this court have been fortuitously limited to what the majority opinion characterizes as rules and practices “in the most literal sense,” this is hardly a determinative means by which to exclude the material in the instant case from the statutory language. The decisions upon which the majority relies do not purport to define or interpret the phrase “rules and practices” and nothing in those decisions suggests that the compilation of a list of names and addresses of personnel at Bolling Air Force Base would not fall within the scope of “rules and practices.”
The majority appears not to distinguish a “rule” from a “practice” but conflates the two terms. In a “most literal sense,” this judge would read “practice” to have a more expansive meaning than “rule” and to encompass the information at issue in this case. Indeed, this judge cannot imagine a personnel practice by an agency that could be more fundamental than obtaining and compiling the names and addresses of its employees. The majority discounts this practice because it is a “practice of collecting the data” which the agency performs merely as “a creature of habit....” This view, however, assumes that the names and addresses of the personnel were collected merely as a futile exercise and ignores the legitimate management and administrative needs of the agency in compiling such information.
The majority’s application of “rules and practices” in the instant case is fundamentally inconsistent with the purpose of exemption two and the policies of FOIA it*799self. In determining what constitutes a “rule or practice” it is imperative that the phrase be interpreted in light of the general thrust of the exemption and the fundamental purpose of FOIA.1 As the Supreme Court has stated in Department of the Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 96 S.Ct. 1592, 48 L.Ed.2d 11 (1976), the purpose of exemption 2 “is simply to relieve agencies of the burden of assembling and maintaining for public inspection matter in which the public could not reasonably be expected to have an interest.” Id. at 369-70, 96 S.Ct. at 1603. Moreover, as this court has previously recognized, exemption 2 embodies “a congressional judgment that material lacking external impact is unlikely to engage legitimate public interest, the touchstone of the policies underlying” the Freedom of Information Act. Cox v. Department of Justice, 601 F.2d 1, 4 (D.C.Cir.1979); see also Martin v. Lauer, 686 F.2d 24, 34 (D.C.Cir.1982) (exemption 2 “serves to relieve the agency from the administrative burden of processing FOIA request when internal matters are not likely to be the subject of public interest”). The majority’s “interpretation” of “rules and practices” to exclude the material in the instant case has now turned the fundamental policy of exemption 2 and FOIA on its head. As the instant case demonstrates, agencies in fact will now be required to suffer the administrative burden of providing individuals with material which is of no legitimate public concern. Moreover, in addition to their executive responsibilities, agencies now must also serve as a clearing house of routine and trivial information which is open to the personal whims or commercial interests of any individual.
The principal rationale that the majority offers against reading the “rules and practices” to include “generic internal trivia” is because it would “entail swarms of court decisions identifying and ‘weighing’ the public interest in disclosure, a task for which courts are not especially well suited.” Whether well-suited or not, the role of determining the public interest under exemption 2 is precisely the role which the legislature has given the court under the statute where, as the majority recognizes, “once the government gets over the threshold test under exemption 2 a court must face that.”
Because this judge finds the material to be within the scope of “rules and practices” the material must still be analyzed to determine whether, under the statutory language, it is an internal rule or practice. Since information which is “internal” to an agency might have some significance outside the agency, and almost any information might have some link to external matters, this court has looked to whether the information is “predominantly” internal. Crooker v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, 670 F.2d 1051, 1056-57 (D.C.Cir.1981) (citing Vaughn v. Rosen, 523 F.2d 1136, 1150-51 (D.C.Cir.1975)).
The information sought here meets the test of “predominant internality.” The list of personnel names and addresses is, if anything, less closely related to external concerns than the examples listed in the legislative history, which could at least embody substantive policies relating to sick leave, parking regulations, or lunch hours. The data base from which appellant wants to extract a list of names was compiled for the administrative convenience of the Air Force. It has no apparent uses beyond personnel management at Bolling Air Force Base. It would require the courts to engage in speculation to attempt to find a use for such a list which had a purpose other than the facilitation of personnel policies and practices at Bolling Air Force Base. No meaningful suggestion has come from appellant which indicates any use of the information by the Air Force going beyond the management of its personnel, and it is virtually self-evident that “the management of its own employees is a matter of intra-agency functioning_” *800National Treasury Employees Union v. Customs Service, 802 F.2d 525, 531 (D.C. Cir.1986).
However, an exemption 2 analysis does not end with the determination that the information sought is related to an internal rule or practice; the information must also be of no genuine public interest. The Supreme Court held in Department of Air Force v. Rose that exemption 2 is not applicable to matters subject to a “genuine and significant public interest.” 425 U.S. at 369-70, 96 S.Ct. at 1603. As this court has held, “if the material relates to trivial administrative matters of no genuine public interest, exemption would be automatic under the statute.” Founding Church of Scientology v. Smith, 721 F.2d 828, 830 n. 4 (D.C.Cir.1983). Thus, “[i]f withholding frustrates legitimate public interest ... the material should be released unless the government can show that disclosure would risk circumvention of lawful agency regulation [or statutes].” Id. As in Department of Air Force v. Rose, even if information is found to be “predominantly internal,” it could still be released if it implicates a legitimate public interest.
Since the list Schwaner seeks is a predominantly internal document, the issue, therefore, becomes whether withholding it would frustrate a legitimate public interest. In making that determination, the agency and the courts must look to the core purposes of FOIA, rather than to the individual requester’s motivations. “Except for cases in which the objection to disclosure is based on a claim of privilege and the person requesting disclosure is the party protected by the privilege, the identity of the requesting party has no bearing on the merits of his or her FOIA request.” Department of Justice v. Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, — U.S. -, 109 S.Ct. 1468, 1480, 103 L.Ed.2d 774 (1989). Schwaner is not put at a disadvantage because the purpose of his request is to obtain a list of names for use as business prospects. However, like any other request, Schwaner’s should be evaluated in terms of whether it has any relationship to the core purposes of FOIA in determining whether release of the information he seeks implicates the public interest. While a commercially-minded requester is as entitled to information as any other, the existence of a commercial motivation is not to be equated with “the public interest.” Cf. National Treasury Employees Union v. Griffin, 811 F.2d 644, 647-48 (D.C.Cir.1987). Appellant’s commercial motivation does not make him less worthy of receiving information about the government, but “the disclosure of names of potential customers for commercial business is wholly unrelated to the purposes behind the FOIA and was never contemplated by Congress in enacting the act.” Wine Hobby USA v. IRS, 502 F.2d 133, 137 (3d Cir.1974). This simply means that a commercial purpose for a request is not enough, by itself, to satisfy the public interest exception to exemption 2.
The Supreme Court’s most recent examination of the nature of the public interest in FOIA cases was in the context of the privacy exemption. Reporters Committee, 109 S.Ct. at 1481. There, the Court reaffirmed the idea advanced in Rose, (an exemption 2 case) that “the basic purpose of the Freedom of Information Act [is] ‘to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny.’ ” Id. The Court went on to link that purpose to public interest analysis in holding the public interest in information sought under FOIA must be within “the ambit of the public interest that the FOIA was enacted to serve.” Id. at 1482. So it would appear that the public interest is grounded in a nexus between the information sought and the central purposes of FOIA. Whether information sought under FOIA is a matter of genuine public interest will depend on whether the request serves FOIA’s core purposes, i.e., “to ensure that the Government’s activities be opened to the sharp eye of public scrutiny.” Id. In essence, the question is whether the information sought would improve the public’s understanding of the way in which government operates.
Appellant asserts that the list he seeks meets that test because it might prove useful to a reporter writing a story about the abusive treatment of enlisted men by superior officers at Bolling Air Force Base. In such a case, he argues, the requested information would be infused with a public interest because it could lead to other infor*801mation that might shed light on the operation of a government facility. The problem with this argument is that it relies on sheer speculation. This judge finds nothing in the cases dealing with exemption 2 to suggest that agencies, in responding to a FOIA request, are required to accommodate interests that are essentially conjectural. In fact, the cases suggest the contrary. The Supreme Court has stated that exemption 2 relieves agencies of the obligation to disclose internal matters “in which the public could not reasonably be expected to have an interest.” Rose, 425 U.S. at 369-70, 96 S.Ct. at 1603 (emphasis added). In like manner, this court has asserted that the exemption protects material that is “not likely to be the subject of public interest.” Martin v. Lauer, 686 F.2d at 34 (emphasis added). While a hypothetical investigation may rise to the requisite threshold to require agency disclosure, the Martin/Rose tests imply a more immediate and tangible public concern than that argued by Schwaner in the instant case.
It is always possible to conjure up a web of circumstances that could- invest virtually any internal procedure with a potential public interest. Thus if exemption 2 is to be applied to FOIA requests in any meaningful way, agencies — and the courts— should limit their inquiry to ascertaining whether the asserted public interest is genuine rather than speculative. Otherwise, the exemption will be stripped of much of its utility and agencies will be subjected to the administrative burdens that Congress intended that they be spared.
This is not to say, of course, that lists of names and addresses maintained by the military may not be of sufficient public interest to warrant disclosure under FOIA. In National Ass’n of Atomic Veterans v. Director, Defense Nuclear Agency, 583 F.Supp. 1483 (D.D.C.1984), for example, the agency declined the request for a list of former servicemen who had been exposed to radiation in connection with atmospheric nuclear arms tests, invoking exemption 6 in order to protect the privacy of the former servicemen. The Association justified its request largely on the basis that it was conducting two medical studies designed to identify a new radiation-associated neuro-muscular disease and to develop clinical diagnostic criteria for application to individuals exposed to radiation during the course of those tests. The court concluded, on the basis of the evidence presented, that the studies were serious, that they could not be properly conducted without access to a list of those who had been exposed, and that the public interest was such as to give rise to a “singularly strong interest in disclosure.” Id. at 1485-86, 1488. Although recognizing that in exemption 2 analysis a less compelling interest than that required for exemption 6 could allow a FOIA requester to overcome an agency’s reasons for withholding under the respective exemptions, the facts in Atomic Veterans underscore the insubstantial nature of appellant’s claim of public interest in this case.
Because the material sought by appellant is related solely to internal personnel rules and practices, and is not the subject of genuine public interest, this judge would affirm the judgment of the District Court.

. In considering what material was "internar to an agency within the statutory language of exemption 2, this court recognized that its interpretation required a pragmatic approach which would effectuate the purpose of the exemption within the overall scheme of the Freedom of Information Act. Crooker v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, 670 F.2d 1051, 1056-57 (D.C.Cir.1981).