Bloomberg L.P. and Dow Jones & Company, Inc. v. United States Postal Service

The Second Circuit affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the USPS, holding that aggregated change-of-address data qualifies as information of a commercial nature under the Postal Reorganization Act. The court ruled that FOIA Exemption 3 bars disclosure of this data because the underlying statute establishes specific criteria for withholding commercial information derived from the agency's core business operations.

Reporters from Bloomberg's CityLab and Dow Jones' The Wall Street Journal filed Freedom of Information Act requests for aggregated, anonymized change-of-address data collected by the United States Postal Service. They sought this data to report on population movement trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the USPS had previously fulfilled similar requests, it denied these specific requests in 2021, stating the data was being developed for a new commercial product called Population Mobility Trends. The district court granted summary judgment to the USPS, and the media organizations appealed, arguing that the data should be available under FOIA's presumption of public access.

The court analyzed whether the requested change-of-address data fell within the 'information of a commercial nature' exemption in the Postal Reorganization Act, which is incorporated into FOIA Exemption 3. The court rejected the argument that merely having economic value makes information commercial. Instead, it found the data was commercial because its value was derived directly from the USPS's core statutory activity of delivering mail. The court noted that the data is a unique asset that competes with private data brokers. Furthermore, the court found that under 'good business practice,' a private business would not give away a valuable product for free when it intends to sell it. The court emphasized that Exemption 3 does not require weighing the public interest in disclosure against the agency's interests; if the statute exempts the information, the exemption applies. The court distinguished this from cases where data is merely incidental to government functions, noting that here the data is a primary commercial product.

The decision affirms that the USPS can withhold aggregated change-of-address data from FOIA requests if it is developing a commercial product to sell that data. This limits the ability of journalists and researchers to access this specific dataset for free, as they must now purchase the Population Mobility Trends product. The ruling clarifies that the Postal Reorganization Act grants the USPS broader discretion to treat its data as a commercial asset than other federal agencies, without a requirement to balance public interest against commercial interests.

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