The Privacy Exemption Under the Public Records Act Depends on Context

In another long-running dispute, the Appeals Court weighed in on the parameters of the privacy exemption under the Public Records Act in City of Somerville v. Supervisor of Public Records of the Commonwealth. In 2014, the Boston Globe sought the name, address, email address, phone number, vehicle make/model/year, license plate number, and permit details for everyone granted a residential parking permit by the city. The city responded that it would redact the name, address, email address, and phone numbers. Upon appeal, the Supervisor ordered the city to produce without redaction. The city then appealed to Superior Court.  

In 2017, the Globe withdrew the first request and replaced it with a request seeking everything except for the email address and phone number. Again, the city offered only to produce redacted documents and the Supervisor again ordered the production of everything without redaction. 

The Superior Court agreed that the motor vehicle information was properly withheld under the privacy exemption to the Public Records Act, G.L. c. 4, § 7, Twenty-sixth (c). A claim that the data was also exempt under clause Twenty-sixth (a) based on a federal statute was summarily dismissed. Yet the Superior Court held that the names and addresses of permit holders must be disclosed. 

The Appeals Court agreed. It reiterated the general rule that the privacy exemption weighs the public’s right to know against an unwarranted invasion of a person’s privacy and should be applied narrowly. It found only a low expectation of privacy for someone transacting business with the city, noting that names and addresses are easily available from other public records, such as street and voter lists. On the other hand, it is only by knowing the names and addresses of residential parking permit holders that the public can assess whether the city is following its policies in the award of such permits for a limited public asset. On balance, in this case the public’s right to know was deemed paramount. 

The Appeals Court issued a cautionary note. Noting that the aggregation of personal information, otherwise innocuous, could risk becoming “the key to the castle,” it lauded the city’s “vigorous and successful advocacy” to protect its citizens’ privacy by refusing to produce the motor vehicle information, data that the Supervisor has ordered produced. It also acknowledged that under the exemption’s balancing test, “[d]epending on the circumstances of the creation and content of the record at issue,” data that may be exempt in one context may be producible in another.