Tuffley v. USDHS, No. 16-15342 (9th Cir. 2017)
Annotate this CasePlaintiff, the treasurer of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents, filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to compel the disclosure of the names of 149 non-citizens who were released from detention pending a final determination whether they will be removed.The Ninth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the United States and the district court's finding that the government properly withheld former detainees' names. The panel held that the released detainees have a substantial privacy interest that outweighs the public interest in the disclosure of their names.
Court Description: Freedom of Information Act. The panel affirmed the district court’s summary judgment in favor of the United States, and the district court’s finding that the government had properly withheld former detainees’ names under Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) Exemption 7(C). Edward Tuffly, the treasurer of the National Border Patrol Council, the union for Border Patrol agents, sought to compel under FOIA the disclosure of the names of 149 non-citizens who were released from detention pending a final determination whether they will be removed. The panel held that the released detainees had a substantial privacy interest that outweighed the public interest in the disclosure of their names. Specifically, the panel held that so long as the disclosure of the information would give rise to a potential, nontrivial invasion of personal privacy, there was a privacy interest to be balanced against the public interest under FOIA Exemption 7(c). In weighing the public interest versus the privacy interest, the panel held that the privacy interests in this case were particularly strong, both because of the context of immigration enforcement and because of the private information already disclosed by the government that would be linked to the names of the released individuals; and the public interest in evaluating the effects of TUFFLY V. USDHS 3 government actions would be advanced only minimally by information that Tuffly sought.
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