United States Dep't of Def. v. Fed. Labor Relations Auth. - 510 U.S. 487, 114 S. Ct. 1006 (1994)

Rule:

The privacy interest protected by Exemption 6 of the Freedom of Information Act encompasses the individual's control of information concerning his or her person. An individual's interest in controlling the dissemination of information regarding personal matters does not dissolve simply because that information may be available to the public in some form.

Facts:

Two local unions filed unfair labor practice charges with respondent Federal Labor Relations Authority after petitioner federal agencies refused to provide them with the home addresses of agency employees in the bargaining units represented by the unions. The Authority concluded that the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (Labor Statute) required the agencies to divulge the addresses and rejected petitioners' argument that such disclosure was prohibited by the Privacy Act of 1974. The Court of Appeals granted enforcement of the Authority's disclosure orders. It agreed that the Privacy Act did not bar disclosure because disclosure would be required under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). In determining that FOIA Exemption 6 -- which exempts from disclosure personnel files "the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy" -- did not apply, the court balanced the public interest in effective collective bargaining embodied in the Labor Statute against the employees' interest in keeping their home addresses private. It thereby rejected the view that, under Department of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of Press, the only public interest to be weighed in the analysis is the extent to which FOIA's central purpose of opening agency action to public scrutiny would be served by disclosure.

Issue:

Does the Privacy Act forbid the disclosure of employee addresses to collective-bargaining representatives pursuant to requests made under the Labor Statute?

Answer:

Yes.

Conclusion:

The principles that followed in Reporters Committee can be applied easily to this case. The court must weigh the privacy interest of bargaining unit employees in nondisclosure of their addresses against the only relevant public interest in the FOIA balancing analysis -- the extent to which disclosure of the information sought would "shed light on an agency's performance of its statutory duties" or otherwise let citizens know "what their government is up to." The relevant public interest supporting disclosure in this case is negligible, at best. Disclosure of the addresses might allow the unions to communicate more effectively with employees, but it would not appreciably further "the citizens' right to be informed about what their government is up to." Indeed, such disclosure would reveal little or nothing about the employing agencies or their activities. Even the Fifth Circuit recognized that "release of the employees' . . . addresses would not in any meaningful way open agency action to the light of public scrutiny." 

The court declines to accept respondents' ambitious invitation to rewrite the statutes before us and to disregard the FOIA principles reaffirmed in Reporters Committee. The Labor Statute does not, as the Fifth Circuit suggested, merely "borrow the FOIA's disclosure calculus for another purpose." Rather, it allows the disclosure of information necessary for effective collective bargaining only "to the extent not prohibited by law." Disclosure of the home addresses is prohibited by the Privacy Act unless an exception to that Act applies. The terms of the Labor Statute in no way suggest that the Privacy Act should be read in light of the purposes of the Labor Statute. If there is an exception, therefore, it must be found within the Privacy Act itself. Congress could have enacted an exception to the Privacy Act's coverage for information "necessary" for collective-bargaining purposes, but it did not do so. In the absence of such a provision, respondents rely on the exception for information the disclosure of which would be "required under [FOIA]." Nowhere, however, does the Labor Statute amend FOIA's disclosure requirements or grant information requesters under the Labor Statute special status under FOIA. Therefore, because all FOIA requesters have an equal, and equally qualified, right to information, the fact that respondents are seeking to vindicate the policies behind the Labor Statute is irrelevant to the FOIA analysis.

Against the virtually nonexistent FOIA-related public interest in disclosure, the court weighs the interest of bargaining unit employees in nondisclosure of their home addresses. Because a very slight privacy interest would suffice to outweigh the relevant public interest, the court need not be exact in its quantification of the privacy interest. It is enough for present purposes to observe that the employees' interest in nondisclosure is not insubstantial. It is true that home addresses often are publicly available through sources such as telephone directories and voter registration lists, but "in an organized society, there are few facts that are not at one time or another divulged to another."