Glen Scott Milner, Petitioner v. Department of the Navy (562 U.S. 562)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided March 7, 2011 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 562 U.S. 562 · 131 S. Ct. 1259
- Decided
- March 7, 2011
- Term
- October Term 2010
- Vote
- 8–1
- Majority author
- Justice Kagan
- Issue area
- Privacy
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U. S. C. § 552, requires federal agencies to make Government records available to the public, subject to nine exemptions for specific categories of material. This case concerns the scope of Exemption 2, which protects from disclosure material that is “related solely to the internal personnel rules and practices of an agency.” § 552(b)(2). Respondent Department of the Navy (Navy or Government) invoked Exemption 2 to deny a FOIA request for data and maps used to help store explosives at a naval base in Washington State. We hold that Exemption 2 does not stretch so far. I Congress enacted FOIA to overhaul the public-disclosure section of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U. S. C. §1002 (1964 ed.). That section of the APA “was plagued with vague phrases” and gradually became more “a withholding statute than a disclosure statute.” EPA v. Mink, 410 U. S. 73, 79 (1973). Congress intended FOIA to “permit access to official information long shielded unnecessarily from public view.” Id., at 80. FOIA thus mandates that an agency disclose records on request, unless they fall within one of nine exemptions. These exemptions are “explicitly made exclusive,” id., at 79, and must be “narrowly construed,” FBI v. Abramson, 456 U. S. 615, 630 (1982). At issue here is Exemption 2, which shields from…
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