Personal Privacy Exception of FOIA: Request for Vessel Owners’ Names and Addresses Denied

Maritime Documentation Center Corp. v. United States Coast Guard, 2024 WL 1007503 (9th Cir. March 8, 2024).

           Maritime Documentation Center (MDC) made a Freedom of Information Request to the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) for the names and addresses of individual vessel owners. In response, the Coast Guard provided a list of vessels contained in the data file, Merchant Vessels of the United States with the names and addresses of vessel owners redacted. MDC then sought declaratory and injunctive relief to disclose the information. The trial court granted Summary Judgment for the USCG which MDC appealed.[1]

            The Ninth Circuit panel affirmed the trial judge who relied on the personal privacy exception of the FOIA[2] which permits an agency to withhold “’ personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.’”[3] The term “similar files” is interpreted broadly.[4]

            In order to satisfy the test whether disclosing the information “constitute[s] a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy,” the agency bears the burden to show “more than de minimis personal privacy interests are at stake.”[5] The agency satisfied its burden as the disclosure “would identify those owners and their addresses with particular vessels, exposing them to commercial solicitations related to their vessels.”[6]

            Neither prior disclosure of the same information by the USCG prior to 2017 or inadvertent disclosure in 2021 after the USCG changed its policy regarding release of this personal information do not weaken the privacy concerns of vessel owners.[7] MDC also has failed to show how any public interest is advanced by disclosure of this information.[8]

[1] Maritime Documentation Center Corp., 2024 WL 1007503 at *1.

[2] 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6).

[3] Maritime Documentation Center Corp., 2024 WL 1007503 at *1; 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6).

[4] Id.; Van Bourg, Allen, Weinberg & Roger v. NLRB, 728 F.2d 1270, 1273 (9th Cir. 1984); Forest Serv. Emps. for Env't Ethics v. U.S. Forest Serv., 524 F.3d 1021, 1024 (9th Cir. 2008).

[5] Id.; Cameranesi v. U.S. Dep't of Def., 856 F.3d 626, 637 (9th Cir. 2017).

[6] Id. at *2; Minnis v. United States Department of Agriculture, 737 F.2d 784 (9th Cir. 1984).

[7] Id.

[8] Id.