Dr. Adam M. Finkel, Plaintiff in a lawsuit against OSHA has been handed a victory in his attempt to gain access to database information held by OSHA. Dr. Finkel made two requests to OSHA. One seeking the contents of an OSHA database on toxic exposures and the second seeking anonymized information about the results of Beryllium sensitization tests conducted on OSHA inspectors. The government denied both requests and Dr. Finkel sued.
In a 28 page opinion ( Download finkel.pdf ), Judge Mary L. Cooper of the District of New Jersey ruled against OSHA on three different FOIA exemptions (4, 6 and 7(C)) and granted summary judgment for the plaintiff.
Judge Cooper found that OSHA's had not established that some of this information was either Trade Secrets or Confidential Commercial Information. The Judge found that OSHA's argument that two (2) percent of the data was trade secret information but that trade secrets were only designated in the individual files not the requested database does not allow the government to not segregate and release the 98% of the information that it does not consider trade secrets. Further, the Judge found that OSHA's argument that the release of Inspector ID numbers, OSHA Office ID numbers and dates of inspections would through a mosaic theory allow employer identities to be revealed was too tenuous of an argument to allow those types of information to be considered trade secrets.
The Judge further found that the information OSHA considered confidential business information to not have been provided voluntarily too the government even though OSHA did not seek a warrant for the information. The Court found that OSHA obtained the information through its regulatory authority for workplace inspections pursuant to 29 U.S.C. Section 657(a) and the fact that they didn't need warrants was irrelevant. Further, OSHA's argument that an increase in seeking warrants will hurt the quality of the material inspected because it will allow companies to clean up areas while waiting for the warrants was shot down by the Court. The Court pointed out that if this becomes a problem, OSHA can obtain ex parte warrants in advance if necessary.
The Court found that OSHA didn't meet its burden under Exemption 6 of demonstrating that Coded ID numbers of employees would reveal their names and harm their privacy interests.
Finally, the Court found that while the records were created for law enforcement purposes, the public interest in disclosing the information will increase the publics understanding of beryllium sensitization and OSHA's response to it. Ultimately, the Court found that the public interest outweighed any limited privacy interest in inspection employee ID numbers.
More information on this lawsuit can be found here.