recognizing a “distinction, in terms of personal privacy, between scattered disclosure of the bits of information contained in a rap sheet and revelation of the rap sheet as a whole” and noting that “there is a vast difference between the public records that might be found after a diligent search of courthouse files, county archives, and local police stations throughout the country and a computerized summary located in a single clearinghouse of information”
How later courts described this case
- recognizing a “distinction, in terms of personal privacy, between scattered disclosure of the bits of information contained in a rap sheet and revelation of the rap sheet as a whole” and noting that “there is a vast difference between the public records that might be found after a diligent search of courthouse files, county archives, and local police stations throughout the country and a computerized summary located in a single clearinghouse of information”
- holding that “rap sheet” ie., criminal records, of .third party was protected from disclosure under Exemption 7(C). “Because events summarized in a rap sheet have been previously disclosed to the public, respondents contend that [the third, personj’s privacy interest in avoiding disclosure of a federal compilation of these events approaches zero. We reject respondents’ cramped notion of personal privacy.”
- concluding that “the fact that ‘an event, is not wholly private does not mean that an individual has no interest in limiting disclosure or dissemination of the information.’ ” (quoting William H. Rehnquist, Is an Expanded Right of Privacy Consistent with Fair and Effective Law Enforcement?, Nelson Timothy Stephens Lectures, University of Kansas Law School, pt. 1, p. 13 (Sept. 26-27, 1974))
- explaining that "[o]ur cases provide support for the proposition that categorical decisions may be appropriate and individual circumstances disregarded when a case fits into a genus in which the balance characteristically tips in one direction! ]” and concluding that such a categorical approach may be undertaken pursuant to Exemption 7(C)
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Questioned by John Davis v. United States Department of Justice, 968 F.2d 1276 (1992)
489 U.S. 749, 109 S.Ct. 1468, 103 L.Ed.2d 774 (1989), upon which the Department relies, does cast doubt on the proposition that, simply because material has been made public at one time, it should be thought permanently in the public domain, even though it has since become “practically] obscur[e].”
Distinguished
Distinguished by Federal Labor Relations Authority v. U.S. Department of the Navy, 966 F.2d 747 (1992)
Thus, the theory underlying FOIA disclosure, as represented in Reporters Committee, is inapplicable in disclosure cases sought under the Labor Statute.
The opinion
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. *781 In 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.