Redding v. Jacobsen

• Decision Date: 16 October 1981
• Docket Number: No. 17222,17222
• Citation: 638 P.2d 503
• Parties: 1 Ed. Law Rep. 1341 John H. REDDING, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. T. Harold JACOBSEN, et al., Defendants and Respondents.
• Court: Utah Supreme Court

Page 503

638 P.2d 503

1 Ed. Law Rep. 1341

John H. REDDING, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. T. Harold JACOBSEN, et al., Defendants and Respondents.

No. 17222.

Supreme Court of Utah.

Oct. 16, 1981.

John Preston Creer, Brent D. Ward, David F. Evans, Salt Lake City, for plaintiff and appellant.

Frank V. Nelson, Brinton R. Burbidge, Thomas C. Anderson, Salt Lake City, for defendants and respondents.

OAKS, Justice:

This is a suit by the former editor of a college newspaper against the president of his college, the Utah State Board of Regents, and the State Archivist, for a declaratory judgment and an injunction to compel them to release personally identifiable gross salary information for all employees of the Utah State System of Higher Education. The disclosure of personally identifiable salary information is forbidden by the Publication of Higher Education Salary Data Act of 1979, codified in Utah Code Annotated, 1953, § 53-48a-1, et seq. In granting defendants' motion for summary judgment, the district court rejected plaintiff's contention that this Act was unconstitutional, and plaintiff took this appeal.

I. THE DECISION IN REDDING I

This controversy began in 1978, when plaintiff, then editor of the student newspaper at Weber State College, obtained an order from the district court compelling disclosure of the gross salaries and wages of all employees of the college. That order, based on the statutory law in effect at the time it was entered, was affirmed by this Court in what the Court explicitly declared to be a decision based "on the record as presented to the district court, and on the basis of our statutory law." Redding v. Brady, Utah, 606 P.2d 1193, 1197, n. 12 (1980) (hereafter, Redding I ). Pursuant to the Utah Information Practices Act of 1975, U.C.A., 1953, § 63-50-1, et seq., the appropriate state administrative agency had classified salaries paid employees of state agencies and institutions as "public data." This classification brought public salaries within the terms of the Public and Private Writings Act, § 78-26-2, which, as interpreted by this Court, made public writings available for inspection and copying by any citizen, unless otherwise expressly provided by statute. Deputy Sheriffs Mutual Aid Association v. Salt Lake County Deputy Sheriffs Merit System Commission, 24 Utah 2d 110, 466 P.2d 836 (1970). Finding no statutory or constitutional provision to the contrary, this Court held in Redding I that the Utah statutes in effect at the time the district court acted required defendants to disclose the salary data sought by plaintiff.

Two constitutional rights were argued in the briefs in Redding I. In addition to his successful argument for a statutory right of disclosure, plaintiff also argued that the Utah State Constitution provisions on free speech and free press (Art. I, § 15) established a public right of access to information regarding the gross salaries paid to public employees. No judicial precedents were cited in support of this asserted right, and plaintiff's brief made no mention of the federal Constitution. This Court did not discuss this constitutional argument in its opinion.

The constitutional discussion in the Redding I opinion focused entirely on defendants' argument that the statutorily required disclosure of personally identifiable salary information "constitutes a violation of (the employees') constitutionally protected right of privacy, which can only be violated after a finding by the court (not present in this case) that the state interest to be served outweighs the individuals' rights" (Brief of Appellant, p. 11). Plaintiff conceded that the constitutional "right to know" was subject to being overridden by "another person's constitutionally protected right of privacy" (Brief of Respondent, p. 7). Understandably, in view of that concession, the Court focused its constitutional discussion on the balance between the "right of the public to know what goes on in its public institutions," 606 P.2d at 1195 (implemented in this case by the statutory command of disclosure), and the defendants' claim that this would violate the employees' constitutional right of privacy. After weighing these two interests and considering the numerous cases cited in the briefs on this issue, this Court concluded that the statutory right of the public "to have and to publish the information as to the salaries paid to employees of the college, outweighs considerations as to the right of privacy of the employees, or of the institution to carry on its operations in secret." 606 P.2d at 1196-97.

II. THE NEW LEGISLATION

After the decree of the district court (but before the action of this Court) in Redding I, the Legislature enacted the Publication of Higher Education Salary Data Act of 1979, U.C.A., 1953, § 53-48a-1, et seq., which is at issue in this case. By this action, the Legislature weighed the competing interests of disclosure and privacy, and curtailed the statutory command of disclosure this Court implemented in Redding I. The purpose of the Act and the pertinent legislative findings are set out in the first section:

The legislature finds and determines that the citizens of this state have a legitimate interest in being informed as to the level of salaries paid to administrators, faculty members, and other employees of institutions of higher education. It also finds and determines, however, that those employees have a right to reasonable privacy with respect to their personal affairs, including their individual salaries. It further finds and determines that specific procedures should be provided by law to implement the public's right to be so informed, while safeguarding to a reasonable degree the privacy of the individual employees, and preventing the imposition of unnecessary and burdensome administrative costs upon such institutions in responding to requests for salary information.

U.C.A., 1953, § 53-48a-1. Section 53-48a-3 requires that each institution file "a complete report of summarized salary data" each year with the State Board of Regents. Under § 53-48a-4, these reports are open for public inspection and copying.

The disputed provisions of the Act on the content of the public report and on the salary data that should not be disclosed are as follows:

Each institution shall prescribe the format for reporting data and for the classification of positions and average salaries, subject to the guidelines prescribed by the board. No classification of positions may include more than 5% of the full-time positions of that institution on the reporting date or less than ten such positions. When average salary information is supplied for any classification, the highest and lowest gross salary payable to positions included in that classification, and the total number of positions included therein, shall be specified.

U.C.A., 1953, 53-48a-3(2).

Except as provided by this act, personally identifiable salary data relating to employees constitutes private information within the meaning of, and shall be subject to disclosure to the extent provided in, the Utah Information Practices Act (63-50-1 to 63-50-10).

U.C.A., 1953, § 53-48a-5. This 1979 reclassification of personally identifiable salary data for higher education as "private information" mandated its confidentiality, since the Utah Information Practices Act, which governed the extent of disclosure of government data, provided that private data was "available only to the appropriate agencies" for specified uses. U.C.A., 1953, § 63-50-3(7). This new statutory direction of confidentiality is still in effect. ¹

As noted above, this Court's decision in Redding I was expressly based on evidence that defendants had refused to provide any salary information on college employees, and on the statutory law in effect at the time the district court entered its decree. However, by the time defendants received that ruling they were already subject to the Publication of Higher Education Salary Data Act of 1979, which mandated confidentiality for personally identifiable salaries but required disclosure of average and high and low salaries in various categories. When defendants followed the new legislation, refusing plaintiff access to personally identifiable salary data, plaintiff brought this second suit, enlarging his disclosure request to cover all employees of the Utah System of Higher Education. The constitutionality of the 1979 legislation is the sole issue on this appeal.

III. DISCLOSURE VS. PRIVACY

It is well to begin by contrasting this case with a multitude of other cases that have concerned the conflict between disclosure and privacy. This is not a case like Redding I or the authorities it discussed, where a statutory command of disclosure is resisted on the basis of an asserted constitutional right of privacy. Where a public agency has a legitimate interest in the outside income, business connections, or personal assets and liabilities of its employees or those it licenses for special privileges, and where a statute or regulation compels the disclosure of such financial information, courts have uniformly overruled constitutional privacy defenses and compelled disclosure to the public agency. ² These are the authorities relied on in Redding I, 606 P.2d at 1196, esp. n. 11. That case and others have been overruled the asserted privacy defense when the required statutory disclosure included personally identifiable salaries paid by the public agency and where disclosure was to the public rather than merely to the agency. ³ In each of these groups of authorities, the statutory command of disclosure has been given primacy over the asserted constitutional right of privacy.

In contrast, instead of a contest between statutory disclosure and constitutional privacy, as in Redding I, this case involves a contest between statutory privacy and constitutional right-to-know. Here, the Legislature has required the disclosure of general salary...