Center for Auto Safety v. NHTSA, Civ. A. No. 92-1151.

• Decision Date: 08 January 1993
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 92-1151.
• Citation: 809 F. Supp. 148
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Columbia
• Parties: CENTER FOR AUTO SAFETY, Plaintiff, v. NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, Defendant.

809 F. Supp. 148

CENTER FOR AUTO SAFETY, Plaintiff, v. NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 92-1151.

United States District Court, District of Columbia.

January 8, 1993.

Paul R.Q. Wolfson, Alan B. Morrison, Washington, DC, for plaintiff.

Elizabeth A. Pugh, Robert A. Van Kirk, Civil Div., Federal Programs Branch, U.S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, DC, for defendant.

MEMORANDUM

GESELL, District Judge.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration ("NHTSA") has denied plaintiff's Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") request for the names and addresses of individuals who have complained to that agency about auto safety problems they have experienced. NHTSA asserts exemption 6 of FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6), to protect complainants' privacy. Plaintiff, Center for Auto Safety ("CAS"), a consumer group, questions the strength of any privacy claim but primarily urges that any privacy concerns are outweighed when balanced against the public interest. This now familiar but unsatisfactory scenario, which causes a court to balance privacy interest against the public interest, comes before the Court on cross-motions for summary judgment, which present, without dispute, all material facts and relevant authorities.

The law in this Circuit and the recent change earlier this year in NHTSA's policy which previously supported disclosure of the complainants' names and addresses can be traced to United States Dep't of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 109 S.Ct. 1468, 103 L.Ed.2d 774 (1989). Reed v. NLRB, 927 F.2d 1249, 1251-52 (D.C.Cir. 1991); National Ass'n of Retired Fed. Employees v. Horner, 879 F.2d 873, 875, 879 (D.C.Cir.1989). In balancing the privacy interest against the public interest in disclosure, this Circuit now gives a much greater emphasis to the indirect effects of releasing a list of names and addresses to accommodate a particular requestor's needs which results in placing the list available to all persons and entities other than the requestor. Indeed, it recently declared that the identity of the requestor and its purposes are not to be weighed in the balancing process. Reed, supra at 1252. This position reflects full recognition that material released under FOIA to one person "must be released to all." Painting and Drywall Work Preservation Fund v. HUD, 936 F.2d 1300, 1302 (D.C.Cir.1991).

CAS seeks the names and addresses as an aid in furthering its efforts to encourage auto safety. NHTSA files complainants' names and addresses in a data bank to use in carrying out the agency's administrative responsibilities and reveals the substance of the complaints publicly without attribution to anyone on a quarterly basis. CAS believes it can learn more than NHTSA releases in summary form by contacting complainants and notes particularly that its efforts will further the effectiveness of the recall system administered through NHTSA. CAS also suggests it has a significant oversight function and may seek funding from complainants to carry out that function. These circumstances, whatever their merit, have little relevance, given the recent decisions of this Circuit.

Since the consequences of a general mailing list of complainants concerned with auto safety are clearly and foreseeably intrusive, complainants will have forfeited a degree of privacy because they chose to alert the proper agency of government to circumstances suggesting tighter auto safety controls. Yet CAS has failed to meet its burden of establishing that the public interest outweighs the privacy interests of complainants to the extent the complainants must, as a price for their interest in sound government, be confronted with the barrage of junk mail, telephone calls, and commercial exploitation that the list will invoke if their names and addresses are placed in the public domain. There are common interests of every complainant in the kind of disclosure contemplated. Because of that fact, a specialized list, by its very nature, will be used by individuals and concerns that do not necessarily share the same concerns of those listed but see a commercial or private advantage in exploiting them. See National Association of...