Court Opinion

ID: 9483008
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:07:34.901113+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:21.134425
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I would affirm the district court essentially on the grounds stated in its carefully reasoned opinion.
“The plain meaning of legislation should be conclusive, except in the 'rare cases [in which] the literal application of a statute will produce a result demonstrably at odds with the intentions of its drafters.’ ” United States v. Ron Pair Enterprises, 489 U.S. 235, 242, 109 S.Ct. 1026, 1031, 103 L.Ed.2d 290 (1989) (citation omitted). Like the district court, I see no words in section 2517 that permit law enforcement officers to disclose to private litigants information obtained for law enforcement purposes unless that information has first been disclosed in a public trial. Even beyond the plain meaning of section 2517, we are faced with Congress’s clear intent to protect the privacy of oral and written communications to the greatest extent possible. See Gelbard v. United States, 408 U.S. 41, 48, 92 S.Ct. 2357, 2361, 33 L.Ed.2d 179 (1972) (in enacting Title III, “the protection of privacy was an overriding congressional concern”). We violate that intent if we make recorded conversations available to private litigants in civil actions when they have not otherwise been made public.
The majority purports to agree with National Broadcasting Co. v. United States Dept. of Justice, 735 F.2d 51 (2d Cir.1984). In fact, the majority misses the point of the Second Circuit’s opinion. Recognizing that important policy considerations led Congress to protect the privacy rights of wiretap subjects in Title III, that court refused to order the government to release the recordings that NBC sought. According to the court:
[T]urning Title III into a general civil discovery mechanism would simply ignore the privacy rights of those whose conversations are overheard. We agree with the government that this was not the intent of Congress. See United States v. Dorfman, 690 F.2d 1230, 1233 (7th Cir.1982) (“we find no evidence that [the draftsmen of section 2517(3)] wanted to create a public right of access”)_ Under Title III, with few exceptions not here relevant, no one other than the government can lawfully engage in wiretapping and it therefore is *643not so unusual that only the government can enjoy its fruits.
Id. at 54.
Rather than follow the Second Circuit’s well-reasoned lead, the majority has fashioned a new five-part test that will determine, on a case-by-case basis, whether wiretap recordings should be released to private litigants. While some standards are better than no standards at all, the majority’s test is contrary to the plain meaning of section 2517(3) and Congress’s intent. Moreover, parts of the test are vague, providing little guidance to district courts that must apply it. For example, it is not clear whether government objection to disclosure should be determinative, or if it might be outweighed by other considerations in some circumstances. Nor does the majority indicate when a nonparty whose privacy interests would be “substantially compromised by disclosure” should be able to prevent release of intercepted communications.
I believe that wiretap subjects are entitled to greater protection under Title III than the majority today provides. Thus, I respectfully dissent.