Court Opinion

ID: 9428534
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:24:04.352133+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:14.073401
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice Brennan joins,
concurring in the judgment.
The law to be applied in this case is relatively simple and straightforward. If the Navy proposes to engage in a major action that will have a significant environmental effect, it must prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS) addressing the consequences of the proposed activity. If disclosing the contents, or even the existence, of the EIS will reveal properly classified materials, the Navy need not publish the document. If nonclassified data is segregable and properly disclosable under Executive Order No. 12065, it must be released to the public. I write separately because I believe that the Court understates the first and third of these points, and overstates the second.
The Court states rather obliquely that if the Navy proposes to store nuclear weapons, “the Department of Defense regulations can fairly be read to require that an EIS be prepared solely for internal [Navy] purposes.” Ante, at 146 (footnote omitted). In fact, the Defense Department regulations explicitly declare that “[t]he fact that a proposed action is of a classified nature does not relieve the proponent of the action from complying with the NEPA,” although in such a circumstance the required EIS “shall be prepared, safeguarded and disseminated .in accordance with the require*148ments applicable to classified information.” 46 Fed. Reg. 22892, 22894 (1981) (to be codified in 32 CFR §775.5). In this, the Defense regulations simply echo the statutory language: NEPA flatly requires that, “to the fullest extent possible,” all federal agencies “include in every recommendation or report on . . . major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed [environmental impact] statement.” 42 U. S. C. §4332(C) (emphasis added). No exception is made for a confidential or classified proposal. Similarly, regulations promulgated by the Council on Environmental Quality provide simply that “environmental impact statements which address classified proposals may be safeguarded and restricted from public dissemination,” 40 CFR § 1507.3(c) (1981); the regulations do not — and could not, consistently with the statute — suggest that classified proposals are exempt from NEPA’s EIS requirement.
It seems to me that this follows necessarily from the function of the EIS. One of its purposes — if not its principal purpose — is to guarantee that “environmental concerns are . . . interwoven into the fabric of agency planning.” Andrus v. Sierra Club, 442 U. S. 347, 351 (1979). The CEQ has recognized:
“The primary purpose of an environmental impact statement is to serve as an action-forcing device to insure that the policies and goals defined in [NEPA] are infused into the ongoing programs and actions of the Federal Government. ... An environmental impact statement is more than a disclosure document. It shall be used by Federal officials in conjunction with other relevant material to plan actions and make decisions.” 40 CFR §1502.1 (1981).
This is no less true when the public is unaware of the agency’s proposals. Indeed, the public’s inability to participate in military decisionmaking makes it particularly important that, *149in cases such as the one before us, the EIS “serve practically as an important contribution to the decisionmaking process.” § 1502.5.
The Court obviously is quite correct in holding that properly classified materials need not be disclosed under NEPA; even information concerning the existence of an EIS may be withheld when publication would divulge sensitive military information. It remains true, however, that the statute is in part intended to inform the public, see ante, at 143, and this informational purpose does not entirely lose its vitality when classified documents are involved. Again, the Defense regulations specifically direct that “[w]hen feasible, [EIS’s] shall be organized in such a manner that classified portions are included as annexes so that the unclassified portions can be made available to the public,” 46 Fed. Reg. 22892, 22894 (1981); further, the CEQ agrees that EIS’s may be organized in such a way “that the unclassified portions can be made available to the public,” 40 CFR § 1507.3(c) (1981). In a given case, then, the military must determine whether the information at issue, consistent with the dictates of the relevant Executive Orders, can be released. That principle is applicable in this and in every other case involving classified military material; I must assume that the Court does not hold differently.
It seems to me that the Court need not go beyond these relatively straightforward principles. FOIA’s first exemption, 5 U. S. C. § 552(b)(1), defeats respondents’ attempt to obtain classified material; it therefore is unnecessary to address the applicability or vitality of Totten v. United States, 92 U. S. 105 (1876), which suggested as a matter of “public policy” that certain suits involving confidential data could not be maintained. Id., at 107. Similarly, it is unnecessary to address the applicability of NLRB v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 421 U. S. 132 (1975), to this case.* Petitioners convinc*150ingly argued that publishing a hypothetical EIS would itself disclose confidential material, and would therefore run afoul of the FOIA’s first exemption. And, in any event, as the Court properly notes, ante, at 146, the respondents have yet to establish that any EIS need be prepared for the West Loch project. That is enough to dispose of the question of a hypothetical EIS.
Accordingly, I concur in the judgment of the Court.

The Court properly notes that Sears held that the FOIA ‘“does not compel agencies to write opinions in cases in which they would not other*150wise be required to do so.’” Ante, at 145, quoting 421 U. S., at 161-162. The Court goes on to suggest that the Court of Appeals’ analysis runs afoul of Sears, because that court “required [the Navy] to prepare a ‘hypothetical’ EIS nowhere mentioned in NEPA.” Ante, at 145. But the Court of Appeals did not explicitly require the preparation of a series of hypothetical documents; instead, it stated that “factual information . . . [used in the EIS] can be based on a series of hypotheses,” Catholic Action of Hawaii/Peace Education Project v. Brown, 643 F. 2d 569, 572 (CA9 1980) (emphasis added), thus authorizing the Navy to prepare advisory studies as a “smokescreen” if it wished to do so.
This does not raise quite the same issue as that involved in Sears. There, the Court held that a plaintiff could not compel the preparation of a document in order to obtain information not yet reduced to documentary form; here, respondents are trying to obtain data which they presume are contained in an existing study, with the Court of Appeals suggesting the production of new documents for the independent purpose of protecting national security. And there is, as well, another distinction between the cases: while it makes use of FOIA’s disclosure provisions, NEPA is in essence an “action-forcing” statute. FOIA itself, however, is not.
It could be argued that the Court of Appeals’ analysis violates the holding of Kleppe v. Sierra Club, 427 U. S. 390, 405-406 (1976), where this Court concluded that an EIS need be prepared only when a project is actually proposed; in seeming contradiction of that holding, the Court of Appeals stated that an EIS must be developed “[i]f nuclear storage is a, potential choice.” 643 F. 2d, at 571 (emphasis added). But it is less clear to me that the strictures of Sears are relevant here, and I would not reach the question.