UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Et Al. v. PROVENZANO

Background

Two separate requests for agency records reached the Supreme Court. One involved the Justice Department and Anthony Provenzano; the other involved two men, Alfred Shapiro and Gregory Wentz, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The courts of appeals had disagreed about whether a Privacy Act rule (called Exemption (j)(2)) should be treated as a withholding statute under FOIA, meaning whether it could block access under FOIA. Because of that split, the Supreme Court agreed to decide the question.

Reasoning

Before the Court decided the legal question, Congress passed the Central Intelligence Information Act and added a new sentence to the Privacy Act saying agencies cannot use Privacy Act exemptions to withhold records that an individual could get under FOIA. The parties and the Government agreed this change made the narrow issue before the Court moot: whatever the Court might say would not change the parties’ rights. The Court therefore denied the parties’ motions to affirm or reverse, vacated the lower-court judgments, and sent the cases back to the courts of appeals to address any remaining issues under the law now in effect.

Real world impact

The ruling means people seeking agency records and the agencies that hold them will have their disputes decided under the updated Privacy Act and FOIA, not under the pre‑amendment rule. The Supreme Court did not resolve the original legal dispute on the merits, so lower courts will now apply the new statutory language and may consider other FOIA exemptions as needed.

Dissents or concurrances

Justice Stevens dissented in one case, arguing the Court should dismiss the petition rather than vacate the lower-court judgment and that the new law did not justify vacating that judgment.