Court Opinion

ID: 9431620
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:44.427983+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:29.372734
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan joins, concurring in the judgment.
I concur in the result the Court reaches in this case, but I cannot follow the route the Court takes to reach that result. In other words, the Court’s use of “categorical balancing” under Exemption 7(C), I think, is not basically sound. Such a bright-line rule obviously has its appeal, but I wonder whether it would not run aground on occasion, such as in a situation where a rap sheet discloses a congressional candidate’s conviction of tax fraud five years before. Surely, the FBI’s disclosure of that information could not “reasonably be expected” to constitute an invasion of personal privacy, much less an unwarranted invasion, inasmuch as the candidate relinquished any interest in preventing the dissemination of this information when he chose to run for Congress. *781In short, I do not believe that Exemption 7(C)’s language and its legislative history, or the case law, support interpreting that provision as exempting all rap-sheet information from the FOIA’s disclosure requirements. See H. R. Rep. No. 1497, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., 11 (1966); S. Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 3, 9 (1965); Department of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U. S. 352, 372 (1976); Lesar v. United States Dept. of Justice, 204 U. S. App. D. C. 200, 214, n. 80, 636 F. 2d 472, 486, n. 80 (1980).
It might be possible to mount a substantial argument in favor of interpreting Exemption 3 and 28 U. S. C. § 534 as exempting all rap-sheet information from the FOIA, especially in the light of the presence of the three post-FOIA enactments the Court mentions, ante, at 753. But the federal parties before this Court have abandoned the Exemption 3 issue they presented to the Court of Appeals and lost, and it perhaps would be inappropriate for us to pursue an inquiry along this line in the present case.
For these reasons, I would not adopt the Court’s bright-line approach but would leave the door open for the disclosure of rap-sheet information in some circumstances. Nonetheless, even a more flexible balancing approach would still require reversing the Court of Appeals in this case. I, therefore, concur in the judgment, but do not join the Court’s opinion.