United States Department of State et al. v. Washington Post Co. (456 U.S. 595)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 17, 1982 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 456 U.S. 595 · 102 S. Ct. 1957
- Decided
- May 17, 1982
- Term
- October Term 1981
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Rehnquist
- Issue area
- Privacy
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the Court. In September 1979, respondent Washington Post Co. filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), 5 U. S. C. § 552, requesting certain documents from petitioner United States Department of State. The subject of the request was defined as “documents indicating whether Dr. Ali Behzadnia and Dr. Ibrahim Yazdi. . . hold valid U. S. passports.” App. 8. The request indicated that respondent would “accept any record held by the Passport Office indicating whether either of these persons is an American citizen.” Ibid. At the time of the request, both Behzadnia and Yazdi were Iranian nationals living in Iran. The State Department denied respondent’s request the following month, stating that release of the requested information “would be ‘a clearly unwarranted invasion of [the] personal privacy’ of these persons,” id., at 14 (quoting 5 U. S. C. § 552(b)(6)), and therefore was exempt from disclosure under Exemption 6 of the FOIA. Denial of respondent’s request was affirmed on appeal by the Department’s Council on Classification Policy, which concluded that “the privacy interests to be protected are not incidental ones, but rather are such that they clearly outweigh any public interests which might be served by release of the requested information.” Id., at 22-23. While pursuing the administrative appeal, respondent…
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