Thomas W. Sikes v. United States Department of the Navy

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[PUBLISH]
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE ELEVENTH CIRCUIT
________________________
No. 17-12421
________________________
D.C. Docket No. 3:16-cv-00074-DHB-BKE
THOMAS W. SIKES,
Plaintiff - Appellant,
versus
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY,
Defendant - Appellee.
________________________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Southern District of Georgia
________________________
(July 19, 2018)
Before MARTIN, JULIE CARNES, and O’SCANNLAIN, * Circuit Judges.
*
Honorable Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, United States Circuit Judge for the Ninth Circuit,
sitting by designation.
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O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:
We must decide whether the United States Department of the Navy
improperly withheld documents related to the suicide of Admiral J.M. Boorda in
response to a request made under the Freedom of Information Act.
I
In 1996, United States Navy Admiral J.M. Boorda, then Chief of Naval
Operations, committed suicide in Washington, D.C. He left two suicide notes at
his home: one addressed to his sailors, which the Navy later released publicly, and
one to his wife, which has not been released. These documents were found by
Naval investigators and added to the Navy’s investigative file for Adm. Boorda’s
death, as were a number of other documents, including six pages of handwritten
notes regarding official business found in the backseat of Adm. Boorda’s official
vehicle (the “backseat notes”).
Thomas Sikes asserts that he is working on a book about the pressures of
holding military office, in which Adm. Boorda’s death will feature prominently.
For years, he has sought to obtain from the Navy copies of various records related
to Adm. Boorda’s suicide, including both the backseat notes and the suicide note to
Adm. Boorda’s wife.
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A
In August 2011, Sikes filed two requests with the Navy under the Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) asking for certain documents related to Adm. Boorda.
Request 1 asked for a list of the individuals who were invited to or who attended
the ceremony during which Adm. Boorda took office as Chief of Naval
Operations. The Navy gave Sikes that list but with many of the names redacted.
Request 2 asked for copies of all documents found by Naval investigators in Adm.
Boorda’s vehicle the day he died, including the backseat notes. The Navy refused
to provide those documents, arguing that they were seized during the course of an
investigation and were therefore not agency records.
In May 2012, Sikes filed suit against the Navy, asking that it be ordered to
produce the documents responsive to Requests 1 and 2. Little over a month into
litigation, the Navy gave Sikes eleven pages of material (including the backseat
notes) in response to Request 2 and moved to dismiss Sikes’s corresponding claim
as moot. The district granted the motion, finding that “all of the documents
responsive to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request 2 have been disclosed.” Sikes later asked
that the Navy provide some additional verification that it had indeed given him
everything within the scope of Request 2, but the Navy never provided such
verification.
3
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The parties continued to litigate Sikes’s Request 1 until the court ultimately
granted summary judgment to Sikes and ordered the Navy to give him an
unredacted copy of the attendee list. See Order Granting Motion for Summary
Judgment in Part at 41, Sikes v. United States, No. 3:12-cv-00045 (S.D. Ga. Dec. 6,
2013) (“Sikes I”). In April 2014, the court entered final judgment and awarded
Sikes more than $45,000 in attorneys fees. Neither party appealed.
B
In 2014, Sikes submitted eight more FOIA requests regarding Adm. Boorda,
many of which were redundant. Two requests (5 and 10) are pertinent to this
appeal.
Request 5, submitted on April 30, 2014, asked for another copy of the
records that had been retrieved from Adm. Boorda’s car and given to Sikes in
response to his earlier Request 2. Specifically, Request 5 asked the Navy to
“furnish a complete copy of all material requested by me on August 26, 2011, in
[Request 2].” The request also complained that no Navy official had ever “attested
that the material previously furnished” in response to Request 2 “constituted all of
the documents in the Navy’s possession that came within the scope of” Request 2.
In response, the Navy provided no documents to Sikes, but asserted that a “review
of the investigative file has determined that you have been provided a complete
copy of all documents originally requested via [Request 2].” After Sikes filed an
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administrative appeal from the agency’s response, the Navy confirmed that it had
“again reviewed the investigative file and determined that the records provided . . .
in response to your request of August 26, 2011, were complete.” The Navy
asserted that FOIA did not require the agency “to conduct additional searches in
response to repetitive requests,” and further that Sikes’s demand for “certification”
of those earlier-disclosed materials had no basis under the statute.
Request 10, submitted on November 10, 2014, asked for an unredacted copy
of the Navy’s 1996 Report of Investigation into Adm. Boorda’s suicide. In
response, the Navy gave Sikes a redacted version of that report. The Navy
withheld from the report a copy of the suicide note Adm. Boorda left at his home
for his wife, citing FOIA privacy exemptions. Sikes again filed an administrative
appeal with the Navy, arguing that the withholding of the suicide note was
improper, but to no avail.
C
1
In September 2016, Sikes filed a second lawsuit against the Navy, which
stated two causes of action for improper withholding of agency records under
FOIA.
With respect to Request 5, Sikes alleged that the Navy had improperly
withheld the materials found in Adm. Boorda’s car, including the backseat notes.
5
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Sikes’s complaint also detailed why he had requested those materials a second
time. Namely, he alleged that after the Navy gave him the backseat notes in 2012,
he received another memo from the Navy which stated that it had in fact destroyed
such notes in 1998. He alleged that he thus had reason to believe the Navy’s 2012
production of the purported notes was false or fraudulent. He sought to compel the
Navy to give him the notes once again, so that he could compare them to what he
was given in 2012.
As to Request 10, Sikes alleged that the Navy had wrongfully withheld the
suicide note Adm. Boorda wrote to his wife. He alleged two bases for improper
withholding. First, he alleged that the Navy had previously disclosed the note by
publishing a blurry photo of it, and thus could no longer withhold it. Alternatively,
he alleged that the Navy had improperly withheld the note under FOIA’s privacy
exemptions, because public interest in the note outweighed the privacy interests of
Adm. Boorda and his family. He once again requested that the court compel the
Navy to produce an unredacted version of the suicide note to him. 1
2
The Navy moved to dismiss Sikes’s complaint both for lack of jurisdiction
and for failure to state a claim. The district court granted the motion, in effect
1
In the alternative to compelling production of the requested documents, Sikes asked the
court to compare such documents to putative copies of them that he possessed, and to certify
whether the Navy’s actual records matched his copies. He no longer seeks such remedy on
appeal.
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finding that Sikes had not sufficiently stated a claim for improper withholding of
either the materials from Adm. Boorda’s car or the suicide note. 2
Regarding Sikes’s Request 5 claim, the court found that the Navy had not
withheld the materials from Adm. Boorda’s car (let alone improperly), because it
had already produced those same records in response to his earlier Request 2.
Regarding the Request 10 claim, the district court rejected Sikes’s contention that
the Navy had previously disclosed the contents of the suicide note by publishing an
illegible photo it. The court failed to address Sikes’s alternative contention that—
even if the suicide note had not previously been disclosed—the Navy’s
withholding of the note under FOIA’s privacy exemptions was improper.
Sikes timely appealed.
II
Sikes first argues that the district court erred in dismissing his claim that, in
response to Request 5, the Navy improperly withheld the documents found in
2
The district court styled its dismissal as one for lack of subject matter jurisdiction,
because FOIA grants federal courts the authority to compel the production of agency records
only where such records have been “improperly withheld.” See 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(B); Alley v.
U.S. Dep’t of Health & Human Servs., 590 F.3d 1195, 1202 (11th Cir. 2009). The district
court’s analysis, however, turned on its assessment of the merits of Sikes’s claims of improper
withholding. That is, Sikes’s lawsuit certainly alleges that the Navy improperly withheld records
under FOIA; the district court dismissed the suit only after determining that such allegations are
meritless. Thus, despite the district court’s characterization of its order, it should properly be
viewed as one for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted. Cf. Main St. Legal
Servs., Inc. v. Nat’l Sec. Council, 811 F.3d 542, 566–67 (2d Cir. 2016) (concluding that the
elements of § 552(a)(4)(B) “reference remedial power, not subject-matter jurisdiction”).
We review the district court’s dismissal of Sikes’s complaint de novo, taking the
allegations in the complaint as true. Thompson v. RelationServe Media, Inc., 610 F.3d 628, 633–
34 (11th Cir. 2010).
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Adm. Boorda’s car. FOIA generally requires agencies to make their records
available to the public upon request, subject to certain exemptions. See generally 5
U.S.C. § 552. It further gives federal courts power “to enjoin [an] agency from
withholding agency records and to order the production of any agency records
improperly withheld.” Id. § 552(a)(4)(B) (emphasis added); see GTE Sylvania,
Inc. v. Consumers Union of U.S., Inc., 445 U.S. 375, 384 (1980).
There is no dispute that the Navy has records responsive to Request 5 and
that the Navy did not give such records to Sikes in response to his request. The
only question is whether those records were “improperly withheld” from Sikes,
given that the Navy had previously produced the same records to him in response
to his Request 2 in 2012.
A
The Navy argues that, because it had given Sikes the materials from Adm.
Boorda’s car years earlier, it did not withhold such records from him at all in
response to Request 5. We disagree.
The Supreme Court has explained that, in FOIA, “Congress used the word
‘withheld’ only in its usual sense.” U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U.S.
136, 150 (1989) (internal quotation marks omitted). When an agency “refuse[s] to
grant [a person’s] requests for [records] in its files, it [has] undoubtedly ‘withheld’
[such records] in any reasonable sense of that term.” Id. This is true even if the
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agency knows the records are otherwise available to the requester. Indeed, an
agency has “‘withheld’ a document under its control when, in denying an
otherwise valid request, it directs the requester to a place outside of the agency
where the document may be” retrieved. Id. (emphasis added).
Under this framework, there can be little doubt that the Navy withheld the
materials found in Adm. Boorda’s car in response to Sikes’s Request 5. Sikes
explicitly requested such materials, and the Navy acknowledges that it has them.
But, instead of giving the records to Sikes, the Navy has essentially told him that
he should already have access to them, based on what he had been given in 2012.
Still, even if that is true, the Navy itself gave nothing to Sikes in response to
Request 5. The Navy’s reliance on an outside source (Sikes himself) for the
availability of the records does not change the fact that it withheld such records
when asked for them. 3
3
The Navy’s contrary argument stems largely from its failure to appreciate that Request
5 was indeed an independent FOIA request rather than an attempt merely to reopen Sikes’s
Request 2 from years earlier. Even if the Navy produced records in satisfaction of Request 2, it
nevertheless withheld such records years later when they were again requested in the standalone
Request 5.
We note that the circumstances might be different where an agency finds multiple copies
of the same document within the materials responsive to a FOIA request (or batch of
simultaneous requests). Thus, we do not mean to suggest that (and we do not decide whether) an
agency must necessarily give a requester every redundant copy of the same document when
responding to such a request. See, e.g., Jett v. FBI, 139 F. Supp. 3d 352, 364–65 (D.D.C. 2015)
(agency not required to give duplicate copies of same documents in responding to a FOIA
request). This, of course, is quite different from refusing to honor an independent FOIA request
simply because it seeks the same materials that were the subject of a different FOIA request
years earlier.
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B
The Navy further argues that, even if it technically withheld records in
response to Request 5, it was justified in doing so because Sikes had been given a
copy of the documents once before. This argument has some commonsense
appeal. Why, after all, should an agency be obliged repeatedly to give the same
materials to the same person? The problem for the Navy, however, is that FOIA
itself contains nothing that would allow an agency to withhold records simply
because it has previously given them to the requester.
1
FOIA provides that, “upon any request for records,” the agency “shall make
the records promptly available to any person,” subject to certain enumerated
exemptions. 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(3)(A) (emphasis added). The Supreme Court has
explained that “[a]n agency must disclose agency records to any person under §
552(a) unless they may be withheld pursuant to one of the nine enumerated
exemptions listed in § 552(b).” Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. at 150–51 (internal
quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added). Those nine exemptions “are explicitly
exclusive,” and withheld “agency records which do not fall within one of the
exemptions are improperly withheld.” Id. at 151 (internal quotation marks
omitted). Yet, as the Navy must concede, none of the enumerated exemptions has
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anything to do with the situation where a person makes a second request for
materials he has already received.4
The Navy argues that, even without an explicit exemption, an agency may
still be excused from fulfilling a FOIA request so long as it acts in good faith and
does not “unjustifiably suppress any information to cover [agency] mistakes or
irregularities.” Such a “good-faith” catch-all has no basis in the statute and would
undermine FOIA’s system of narrow and specifically identified exemptions.
Indeed, if an agency could simply withhold records for any fair reason, what would
be the point of an exhaustive list of enumerated exemptions? Unsurprisingly, the
Navy cites no case in support of such an overarching exemption, and in fact the
Supreme Court has rejected other attempts to insert exemptions into FOIA to
address an agency’s good-faith policy concerns. See, e.g., Milner v. Dep’t of Navy,
562 U.S. 562, 581 (2011) (refusing to allow exemption for “records whose release
would threaten the Nation’s vital interests”); Dep’t of Interior v. Klamath Water
Users Protective Ass’n, 532 U.S. 1, 15–16 (2001) (refusing to allow exemption for
documents whose release would “impair the [agency’s] performance of a specific
fiduciary obligation to protect the confidentiality of communications with tribes”).
4
The exemptions are for matters that are: (1) classified; (2) related solely to internal
personnel rules and practices; (3) specifically exempted from disclosure by statute; (4) trade
secrets or financial information; (5) privileged; (6) personally private personnel or medical files;
(7) various types of law-enforcement records; (8) related to the regulation of banks; or (9)
geological information concerning wells. 5 U.S.C. § 552(b).
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At most, the Navy notes that the Supreme Court has held that FOIA does not
require an agency to produce documents that are protected from disclosure by a
court injunction, even though the statute mentions no such exemption. See
generally GTE Sylvania, Inc., 445 U.S. at 375. But if such were not the case, the
agency would face two contradictory legal commands: either violate FOIA or
commit contempt of court. The Supreme Court’s reluctance to read FOIA to
impose mutually exclusive legal obligations on an agency has little to do with our
case, and it certainly does not support the imposition of the all-consuming good-
faith exemption the Navy now urges. As the Court later explained, GTE Sylvania
represents a “slight [departure] at best” from “FOIA’s self-contained exemption
scheme,” and it does not invite courts “to engage in balancing, based on public
availability and other factors, to determine whether there has been an unjustified
denial of information.” Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. at 155.
Moreover, to allow an agency to deny a FOIA request merely because it
seeks records previously received would permit the agency to base its FOIA
decision on considerations that the Supreme Court has forbidden. For example, the
Navy’s proposed rule turns principally on who has asked for the records. The
Navy does not dispute that it would be obligated to produce the records again if
someone other than Sikes requested them. The Navy argues that Sikes’s second
request may be treated differently only because he also made the first request for
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such documents. But the Supreme Court has made clear that “the identity of the
requesting party has no bearing on the merits of his or her FOIA request.” U.S.
Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Comm. for Freedom of the Press, 489 U.S. 749, 771
(1989) (emphasis added); see also Nat’l Archives & Records Admin. v. Favish, 541
U.S. 157, 172 (2004) (“As a general rule, if the information is subject to disclosure,
it belongs to all.” (emphasis added)). Likewise, the Navy’s approach may require
the agency to consider the outside availability of the records to the requester.
Indeed, the Navy suggests that a duplicate request might be honored if the
requester needed to replace documents that had been lost or destroyed since he first
received them. But, once again, the Supreme Court has rejected the notion that an
agency may base its response to a FOIA request on the requester’s perceived
ability to retrieve the records from other sources. See Tax Analysts, 492 U.S. at
150, 155.
In sum, the Navy has asked us to “read into the FOIA a disclosure
exemption that Congress did not itself provide,” id. at 154, and which would
require an agency to consider factors the Supreme Court has held are off-limits in
the FOIA context. We decline to do so.5
5
We also reject the Navy’s suggestion that an exception for repeated requests is
necessary to prevent agencies from being harassed by vexatious requests. Even if we could
inject an exemption into FOIA that the statute itself does not recognize, the Navy has failed to
demonstrate what is uniquely burdensome about the situation it posits. If someone wanted to
bother an agency through FOIA, the easiest way would seemingly be to file a succession of
requests for different material (which we would expect to be far more cumbersome as each
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C
Finally, we reject the Navy’s argument that Sikes’s claim is precluded by the
parties’ prior litigation regarding Request 2. Specifically, the Navy argues that the
sufficiency of the Navy’s response to Sikes’s identical Request 2 was already
conclusively determined in Sikes I and therefore cannot be re-litigated now. See
generally In re Piper Aircraft Corp., 244 F.3d 1289, 1296 (11th Cir. 2001)
(discussing claim preclusion). The Navy is wrong, however, that Sikes’s claim
regarding Request 5 has anything to do with such determination.
In Sikes I, the court determined that the eleven pages of records the Navy
gave Sikes in 2012 fully satisfied his Request 2. Sikes therefore may be precluded
from later arguing that such documents were not a complete response to Request 2.
And thus, if the Navy had responded to Sikes’s identical Request 5 by giving him
those same eleven pages, Sikes might be barred from arguing that the Navy should
have given him anything more. See Martin v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 488 F.3d 446,
would require the agency to conduct a new search, collection, and review of information). Yet,
the Navy does not suggest that FOIA somehow limits the number of different requests any
individual can make; it is unclear why the statute must therefore limit the number of similar
requests the individual can make.
Moreover, FOIA already contains safeguards against the sort of vexatious conduct the
Navy describes, including the ability to charge requesters various fees for the cost of responding
to their requests, 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A), and the ability to place frequently requested records in
an online FOIA library where later requests can be directed, see generally id. § 552(a)(2). If the
Navy has a complaint about the effectiveness of these measures or the potential to abuse the
substantive right Congress created, it ought to be directed to Congress itself. See Milner, 562
U.S. at 581 (“[T]he Government may of course seek relief from Congress. All we hold today is
that Congress has not enacted the FOIA exemption the Government desires. We leave to
Congress, as is appropriate, the question whether it should do so.” (citation omitted)).
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453–55 (D.C. Cir. 2007) (requester precluded from re-litigating validity of
identical redactions made in response to duplicate FOIA request).
But that is not what happened. Request 5 is an independent—albeit
duplicate—request, and the Navy gave Sikes no records in response to it. This
failure to provide any records at all is what Sikes argues violated FOIA. He does
not argue that the Navy must now give him something more than what he received
in 2012—in fact those same documents are exactly what he seeks. His goal is to
see whether the Navy will produce that same material now, not to challenge its
sufficiency if the Navy does so.
Because Sikes’s claim does not challenge the adequacy of the Navy’s
production in response to Request 2, Sikes I’s determination of that issue is beside
the point. Sikes I did not consider the question presented here and nothing in such
case precludes Sikes’s claim. 6
III
Sikes also argues that the district court erred in dismissing his claim that, in
response to Request 10, the Navy improperly withheld Adm. Boorda’s suicide note
to his wife. The Navy defended its decision to withhold the note under FOIA’s
6
For these same reasons, Sikes’s claim is not moot simply because the Navy satisfied his
Request 2 in 2012. Once again, Request 5 is an independent request. His claim might be moot if
the Navy indeed produced the requested material in satisfaction of that new request. See Chilivis
v. SEC, 673 F.2d 1205, 1209–10 (11th Cir. 1982) (FOIA lawsuit becomes moot once agency
voluntarily provides requested records).
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privacy exemptions 6 and 7(C). Sikes alleges that such withholding was improper
because any privacy interests in the note might be outweighed by the public
interest in its disclosure—an argument the district court failed to address at all.
Sikes asks that the case be remanded so that the district court can consider such
argument in the first instance, and only after it reviews the contents of the withheld
note in camera. 7
A
There is no doubt that the district court erred in failing to consider Sikes’s
argument that the Navy cannot withhold the note pursuant to FOIA’s privacy
exemptions. It is the Navy’s burden to justify its decision to withhold the note on
the basis of the asserted FOIA exemptions, and the district court therefore had an
obligation to determine whether the claimed exemptions apply. See Stephenson v.
IRS, 629 F.2d 1140, 1144 (5th Cir. 1980). Indeed, even the Navy does not defend
the district court’s failure to address such argument.
The Navy argues that we may nevertheless affirm the dismissal of Sikes’s
claim because the district court’s error was harmless. That is, the Navy argues that
there is no need to remand the case to the district court to consider Sikes’s
argument about the privacy exemptions, because it is clear that, as a matter of law,
such exemptions do apply. As explained below, we agree.
7
On appeal, Sikes has abandoned his claim that the suicide note cannot be withheld
because the Navy previously released a blurry photo of the note.
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B
The Navy argues that the suicide note is excused from disclosure under
FOIA Exemption 7(C), 8 which covers “records or information compiled for law
enforcement purposes”9 if their production “could reasonably be expected to
constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C);
see Favish, 541 U.S. at 160. The Supreme Court has held that such exemption
protects the personal privacy of both the person to whom the information pertains
as well as his family—including specifically the privacy of surviving family
members who would object to the disclosure of “details surrounding their relative’s
death.” Id. at 171. We must balance the relevant privacy interests against the
public interest in disclosure. Id. The “only relevant public interest . . . is the extent
to which disclosure would serve the core purpose of the FOIA, which is
contributing significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of
the government.” U.S. Dep’t of Defense v. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 510 U.S.
487, 495 (1994) (internal quotation marks, alteration, and emphasis omitted).
8
On appeal, the Navy does not argue that the withholding was justified under FOIA
Exemption 6, a separate privacy protection which is generally less protective than 7(C). See
Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 756.
9
Sikes does not dispute that the Navy collected (and retains) the suicide note in its
investigation “for law enforcement purposes.”
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1
The privacy interests in the withheld note are unquestionably strong. In
National Archives & Records Administration v. Favish, the Supreme Court upheld
the withholding of photographs of the scene of former White House lawyer
Vincent Foster’s suicide. See generally 541 U.S. at 164–76. In doing so, the
Supreme Court recognized the “weighty privacy interests” of family members
seeking to preserve their private memories of a deceased loved one and to “secure
their own refuge from a sensation-seeking culture for their own peace of mind and
tranquility.” Id. at 166–67, 171. The same interests apply here and to an even
greater degree. Indeed, the requested suicide note would intrude not only into the
memory of a deceased loved one, but more specifically into the intimate and
private relationship between Sikes and his wife. The note would reveal the deeply
personal sentiments Sikes chose to share with his wife in the last moments of his
life—quite likely to be a window into his most sincere reflections on their
relationship together. As the Navy puts it, Adm. Boorda and his wife “have the
strongest personal-privacy interest” in such matters. See also U.S. Dep’t of State v.
Ray, 502 U.S. 164, 175 (1991) (Exemption 6 protects “highly personal information
regarding marital and employment status, children, [and] living conditions”);
Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 769 (Exemption 7(C) recognizes “the privacy
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interest in keeping personal facts away from the public eye”). Understandably,
Sikes does not seriously dispute this characterization. 10
2
Such significant privacy interests “should yield only where exceptional
[public] interests militate in favor of disclosure.” Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Nat’l
Archives & Records Admin., 876 F.3d 346, 350 (D.C. Cir. 2017) (internal
quotation marks omitted). But the public interest in disclosure that Sikes asserts is
scant in comparison.
In his complaint, Sikes alleged that he believed the note may reveal that
Adm. Boorda had an extramarital affair and was under significant pressure in light
of the military’s criminalization of adultery. The complaint alleged that, if true,
such information might contribute to public reconsideration of the military’s
penalties for infidelity. But, even if Sikes’s speculation is correct, reflection on
one personal consequence of the military’s publicly known policy on adultery—
while perhaps of some general “public interest”—would touch only tangentially
upon the only interest that matters for FOIA purposes: contributing to the public’s
understanding of the operations or activities of the government. See Reporters
Comm., 489 U.S. at 775. Moreover, even if Sikes’s speculation that Adm. Boorda
10
At most, Sikes suggests in passing that these significant privacy interests have
“attenuated over the twenty-plus years since Admiral Boorda’s suicide.” But the mere passage
of time—or perhaps even death—without more “does not materially diminish these interests.”
Schrecker v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 349 F.3d 657, 666 (D.C. Cir. 2003); see Accuracy in Media,
Inc. v. Nat’l Park Serv., 194 F.3d 120, 123 (D.C. Cir. 1999).
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had an extramarital affair were true, revelation of such information would only
increase his family members’ privacy interests in the note even higher.
On appeal, Sikes more broadly speculates that public interest would be
served because “the note may have revealed pressures Admiral Boorda faced as a
naval officer,” without any further elaboration. Even if true, a glimpse into the
general level of pressure that came with Adm. Boorda’s job would not
“contribut[e] significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities”
of the Navy. Fed. Labor Relations Auth., 510 U.S. at 495 (internal quotation
marks and emphasis omitted). This is especially so in light of the fact that the
Navy has publicly disclosed the separate suicide note that Adm. Boorda addressed
to his sailors. That note did touch on certain pressures of Adm. Boorda’s position
and revealed that Adm. Boorda couldn’t “bear to bring dishonor” to his sailors
based on accusations that he had worn two combat ribbons that he had not earned.
Whatever amount the additional note might contribute to the understanding of such
issues likely pales in comparison to the degree to which the note would invade the
Boordas’ privacy.
Sikes’s only other argument is that “it is possible that the suicide note
contains statements that are of great public importance and that do not disclose
sensitive personal information.” He argues, therefore, that the court should not
rule in the Navy’s favor without at least first inspecting the note in camera to
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weigh its actual content. But this blanket assertion proves too much. Certainly, it
is possible that the note contains information of significant public importance;
perhaps it is not that personal after all. But the same could be said of any
governmental record until one has seen its contents. Under Sikes’s argument, then,
essentially every record that is alleged to have been improperly withheld under
FOIA’s privacy exemptions should be reviewed in camera. Yet, in camera
inspection is not required under FOIA, and thus Sikes must point to something
specific about the document in question that would entitle him to such review. See
Miscavige v. IRS, 2 F.3d 366, 368 (11th Cir. 1993).
3
Without question, the district court should have considered Sikes’s argument
regarding the applicability of the asserted privacy exemptions in the first instance.
Indeed, usually, “FOIA cases should be handled on motions for summary
judgment, once the documents in issue are properly identified” and after the
government has supplied affidavits or other information describing the documents.
Id. at 369. Yet, even without further development of the record, there is no dispute
over the general nature of the document at issue here: a suicide note written
privately from a husband to his wife and left at the home they shared together. We
are confident that such document is properly subject to protection under exemption
7(C). Cf. Reporters Comm., 489 U.S. at 776 (some documents, by their nature,
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“fit[] into a genus in which the [privacy] balance characteristically tips in one
direction”).
Even without further information on the exact details of its contents, the
suicide note from Adm. Boorda to his wife is the type of document whose
disclosure can “reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of
personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(7)(C); see also Reporters Comm., 489 U.S.
at 777 n.22 (emphasizing that exemption 7(C) applies based on the reasonable
expectation that a disclosure would unduly invade personal privacy rather than on
a showing that the disclosure in fact would do so). There is nothing to indicate that
the note was in any sense a product of the Navy or of Adm. Boorda’s official
duties, especially in light of the fact that Adm. Boorda left a separate suicide note
to those under his official command, which has been made available to the public.
Indeed, the only reason the Navy even has the note is because it was found at
Adm. Boorda’s home by Naval investigators. Thus, although it is held within the
Navy’s files, there is no reason to expect the note to be anything other than an
intimate message written from husband to wife. Those individuals do not forfeit
their significant privacy interests in such a note merely because one of them held
an important government position at the time. See generally Judicial Watch, 876
F.3d at 349–51 (draft indictment of Hillary Clinton protected under exemption
7(C)); cf. Reporters Committee, 489 U.S. at 774 (“FOIA’s central purpose is to
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ensure that the Government’s activities be opened to the sharp eye of public
scrutiny, not that information about private citizens that happens to be in the
warehouse of the Government is so disclosed.”).
Thus, even if we cannot completely rule out the possibility that the suicide
note might reveal something of public importance, every indication is that a note of
this type is of a predominantly—and inescapably—personal nature. In these
circumstances, we need not remand to the district court to have it view the note in
order to reject Sikes’s unfounded speculation about its value to the public. Sikes
has not stated a plausible claim that the Navy’s withholding of it under FOIA
exemption 7(C) was improper.
IV
The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED in part and REVERSED
in part. The case is REMANDED for further proceedings.
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