Church of Scientology of California v. U.S. Postal Service

• Decision Date: 26 March 1979
• Docket Number: No. 76-1610,76-1610
• Parties: CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF CALIFORNIA, a non-profit corporation, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE, Benjamin Bailer, Postmaster General, Postal Inspection Service, William J. Cotter, Chief Inspector, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 902

593 F.2d 902

CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY OF CALIFORNIA, a non-profit corporation, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE, Benjamin Bailer, Postmaster General, Postal Inspection Service, William J Cotter, Chief Inspector, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 76-1610.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

March 26, 1979.

Barry L. Weissman (argued), Beverly Hills, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

Leonard Schaitman of Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Mark N. Mutterperl (argued), of Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Central District of California.

Before ELY and TRASK, Circuit Judges, and EAST, ^* District Judge.

ELY, Circuit Judge:

The Church of Scientology of California (the Church) appeals from a summary judgment entered against it and in favor of the United States Postal Service. The District Court upheld the refusal of the Postal Service to release to the Church a number of records assertedly gathered during the course of law enforcement investigations of the Church and its members.

I.

The Church filed its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request ¹ with the Postal Service seeking access to information compiled by the service relating to the Church, any of its affiliated organizations, or its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. After conducting an extensive search of its files, the Postal Service released numerous documents to the requestor. Not all the information in its files relating to the Church and its activities was disclosed, however. A number of documents were withheld from disclosure as the alleged fruits of Postal Inspection Service investigations of possible criminal offenses. ²

When the refusal to disclose was challenged in the District Court, the Postal Service defended its withholding on the basis of Exemption 3 of the FOIA ³ and the investigatory file exemption of the Postal Reorganization Act, 39 U.S.C. § 410(c)(6). ⁴ After examining the requested materials In camera, the District Court adopted the Government's characterization of the records as having been compiled during law enforcement investigations. The District Court also concluded that 39 U.S.C. § 410(c)(6) was a specific exempting statute of the sort described in FOIA Exemption 3; therefore, the Church's request for the Postal Service documents was denied. Because it concluded that the Postal Reorganization Act's § 410(c)(6) specifically excluded Postal Service investigatory files from FOIA compelled disclosure, the District Court did not reach the Government's alternative grounds for nondisclosure based upon Exemptions 5 and 7. ⁵

We remand to the District Court in order that it may consider the impact of recent amendments to the FOIA as well as pertinent legislative history. Both shed light as to the manner in which the exemptions raised by the Government should be construed.

II.

Since the time of the challenged Order, filed December 19, 1975, Congress amended the FOIA ⁶ by qualifying Exemption 3 with conditions that a statute must satisfy if it is to be considered as one specifically exempting disclosure. Thus, as amended, Exemption 3 now provides that an exempting statute must either (A) require that information in an agency's possession be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave No discretion on the issue, or (B) establish particular criteria for withholding information or refer with particularity to the types of matters to be withheld.

We have recently held that the amended version of FOIA Exemption 3 should govern the actions of a government agency, even though the amendment did not become effective until the time of an appeal already pending. Lee Pharmaceuticals v. Kreps, 577 F.2d 610, 614 (9th Cir. 1978). The legislative history to the amendment clearly evinces Congress' intention to overrule the Supreme Court's expansive interpretation given to the original version of Exemption 3 in Administrator, FAA v. Robertson, 422 U.S. 255, 95 S.Ct. 2140, 45 L.Ed.2d 164 (1972). Some of the more significant history reads:

Believing that the decision misconceives the intent of exemption (3), the committee recommends that the exemption be amended to exempt only material Required to be withheld from the public by any statute establishing particular criteria or referring to particular types of information.

H.R.Rep.No.94-880, 94th Cong. 2d Sess. (1976), reprinted in 3 U.S.Code Cong. and Admin.News, pp. 2183, 2205. (Emphasis added.)

The consideration of deference leads us to believe that the District Court should be allowed the first opportunity to consider whether 39 U.S.C. § 410(c) (6) qualifies as an exempting statute within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 552(b) (3), as amended. ⁷

REVERSED AND REMANDED.

* Honorable William G. East, Senior District Judge, District of Oregon, sitting by designation.

1 The Postal Reorganization Act, 39 U.S.C. § 101 Et seq., extended the reach of the FOIA, 5 U.S.C. § 552, to the newly created Postal Service. 39 U.S.C. § 410(b)(1). Pursuant thereto, the appellant requested that the Postal Service provide it with certain records, in accordance with 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3), which reads in pertinent part:

(a)

(3) . . . each agency, upon any request for records which (A) reasonably describes such records and (B) is made in accordance with published rules . . . shall make the records promptly available to any person.

2 The Postal Service also resisted disclosing an additional fourteen pages of materials, contending that release of the information would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy within the meaning of 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6) (Exemption 6). At oral argument, the Government's attorney represented to the panel that these materials would be turned over to the Church. In reliance upon such representations, we hold that the questions raised by the withholding of these fourteen pages are moot; hence, we do not reach the Exemption 6 issue.

3 At the time the District Court entered its judgment, Exemption 3 excepted from the disclosure requirements of the FOIA any information "specifically exempted from disclosure by statute." As discussed Infra, Exemption 3 was subsequently amended to read as follows:

(b) This section does not apply to matters that are

(3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute (other than section 552b of this title), provided that such statute (A) requires that the matters be withheld from the public in such a manner as to leave no discretion on the issue, or (B) establishes particular criteria for withholding or refers to particular types of matters to be withheld . . . .

4 The investigatory files exemption claimed by the Postal Service, 39 U.S.C. § 410(c)(6), reads as follows:

(c) Subsection (b)(1) of this section shall not require the disclosure of

(6) investigatory files, whether or not considered closed, compiled for law enforcement purposes except to the extent available by law to a party other than the Postal Service.

5 Exemptions 5 and 7 except from the disclosure requirements of the FOIA inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums and law enforcement investigatory files, respectively. The exemptions read as follows:

(b) This section does not apply to matters that are

(5) inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency;

(7) investigatory records compiled for law enforcement purposes, but only to the extent that the production of such records would (A) interfere with enforcement proceedings, (B) deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication, (C) constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, (D) disclose the identity of a confidential source and, in the case of a record compiled by a...