Court Opinion

ID: 9483155
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:13:04.987727+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:27.842079
License: Public Domain

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the denial of rehearing en banc.
For the reasons stated in my dissent, I continue to believe the panel decision is quite wrong. But it is hard to classify the dispute as one of “exceptional importance” or where en banc treatment is truly “necessary” to maintain uniformity of circuit law. See Rule 35(a), Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure. The opinion claims adherence to United States Dep’t of Justice v. Julian, 486 U.S. 1 (1988), which appears to preclude finding a “require[ment]” of non-disclosure simply by application of the expressio unius maxim to a mandate of disclosure; the panel does not suggest that later cases have undermined Julian. Thus the decision is evidently driven by some idiosyncratic feature of 42 U.S.C. § 2286d(a) (1988), admittedly still undetectable by me, rather than by a view that specific mandates of disclosure generally support an inference that related disclosures are forbidden. Believing the case will cast no shadow over circuit law on Exemption 3,1 have not called for a vote on rehearing en banc.
WALD, Circuit Judge:
I agree with Judge Williams on the merits of the issue. I am less sanguine about its “nonexceptional” nature; I can only hope his prediction of its “shadowless” character proves correct. I do not call for an en banc rehearing because I believe it would be futile to do so.