I. "Personnel and Medical Files and Similar Files"

As an initial matter, you may argue that the information at issue does not fall within the scope of the types of records covered by Exemption 6.

The exemption covers “information which applies to a particular individual,” regardless of the nature of the file in which the information is contained.² Where possible, you should argue that the information at issue is not truly personal and is “unrelated to any particular person,” as such information “presumably would not satisfy the threshold test” of Exemption 6.³

For example, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the names, titles, email addresses, and phone numbers of agency employees contained in intra-agency email messages discussing arrest and staffing statistics, as well as agency terminology related to transportation nodes, were “mundane interoffice communications that do not contain any detailed personal information” and could “in no way be construed as similar to personnel or medical files.”⁴ Upon finding that the information at issue was not the type protected by the exemption, the court ceased its analysis of the applicability of Exemption 6, declining to consider “the second step” — “balanc[ing] the public’s interest in disclosure against the privacy interests of the government employees.”⁵

In interpreting the scope of “personnel,” the U.S. Supreme Court has explained that while “[t]here is sparse legislative history as to the precise scope” of the term, Congress envisioned that files maintained by agencies such as the Health, Education, and Welfare Department, Selective Service, and Veterans’ Administration constituted “personnel files.”⁶ The Court held that case summaries of honor code hearings of the U.S. Air Force Academy were not “personnel files” because they did not contain personal data ordinarily found in a personnel file, such as birthplace, parents’ names, past residences, school records, examination results, or work performance evaluations.⁷ Further, access to the files was “not drastically limited, as is customarily true of personnel files.”⁸

Instead, the court characterized them as “similar files” because they related to personnel discipline and “implicate[d] similar privacy values” as personnel files, such as the possibility of embarrassment, disgrace, and loss of friends or work.⁹ However, the Court also emphasized that even where a “personnel file” is at issue, an agency cannot apply a blanket exemption to withhold all of the information contained in such a file, and must release it unless “a clearly unwarranted invasion of privacy” would result.¹⁰

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the term “similar files” has “a broad, rather than a narrow, meaning,” citing the legislative history of the FOIA.¹¹ An example of a record that a court found to be a “similar file[]” was an agency investigative report containing information about individuals’ “marital status, legitimacy of children, identity of fathers of children, medical condition, welfare payments, alcoholic consumption, family fights, [and] reputation.”¹²

If possible, you should attempt to argue that the information at issue does not fall under Exemption 6 because it does not reveal personal information, or because the agency has not limited access to it in the way it would maintain a personnel or medical file.