TheCorporateCounsel.net

June 28, 2019

FOIA: SCOTUS Puts the Kibosh on “Substantial Competitive Harm”

FOIA Exemption 4 protects “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential.” However, most federal circuit courts have read in a “substantial competitive harm” test under which commercial information would be regarded as “confidential” only if its disclosure was likely to cause substantial harm to the competitive position of the person from whom it was obtained.

The substantial competitive harm requirement had its genesis in the D.C. Circuit’s 1974 decision in National Parks & Conservation Association v. Morton, and the standard had been widely adopted by other courts.  But earlier this week, by a 6-3 vote, the SCOTUS invalidated the requirement in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media.  Here’s an excerpt from this Cleary Gottlieb memo that addresses the Court’s reasoning:

Notwithstanding that the lower courts have followed National Parks in one form or another for 45 years, the Supreme Court roundly rejected it. Writing for six members of the Court, Justice Gorsuch criticized the D.C. Circuit’s creation of the “substantial competitive harms test” based on its interpretation of legislative history as demonstrating a “casual disregard of the rules of statutory interpretation.”

Food Marketing Institute held that a court must begin its analysis of statutory terms by referencing the ordinary meaning and structure of the law itself, and when this leads to a clear answer, the court must not go further. The Court found that because there is “clear statutory language” in FOIA, legislative history should never have been allowed to “muddy the meaning” of this language.

The decision should substantially reduce the burden associated protecting confidential information submitted to the government, but the memo says that it also raises questions about how agencies and courts will apply existing regulations that incorporate the “substantial competitive harm” test, and whether they will need to revise such regulations or attempt to justify disclosure decisions on other grounds.

 What Does the SCOTUS’s Decision Mean for CTRs?

The SEC is one of the agencies that will need to sort out how the SCOTUS’s decision to eliminate the “substantial competitive harm” standard impacts existing rules. In that regard, here are some insights that Bass Berry’s Jay Knight shared with us on how the Court’s decision complicates the SEC’s recently simplified CTR process:

As everyone may recall, in March the SEC adopted amendments to disclosure requirements for reporting companies, as mandated by the 2015 Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (the “FAST Act”). Among the amendments was a simpler CTR process, which now allows registrants to omit immaterial confidential information from acquisition agreements filed pursuant to Item 601(b)(2) of Regulation S-K and material contracts filed pursuant to Item 601(b)(10) of Regulation S-K without having to file a concurrent confidential treatment request. In short, registrants are permitted to redact provisions in such exhibit filings “if those provisions are both not material and would likely cause competitive harm to the registrant if publicly disclosed.” (emphasis added)

In the SEC’s adopting release, the SEC notes that it slightly revised the language of the amendment in the final rule to refer to information that “would likely cause competitive harm” to “more closely track the standard under FOIA.” (see page 25 of the adopting release) With the Supreme Court holding that FOIA exemption 4 does not have a competitive harm condition, it calls into question whether the “competitive harm” standard in Item 601 continues to be appropriate. (Other potential rules impacted are Exchange Act Rule 24b-2 and Securities Act Rule 406, which require that applicants for confidential treatment justify their nondisclosure on the basis of the applicable exemption(s) from disclosure under Rule 80, as well as Staff Legal Bulletin No. 1 and 1A, and Rule 83.)

Since that competitive harm standard is embedded in the SEC’s rules, at this point the prudent path for companies appears to be to continue to adhere the requirements of those rules until the SEC provides further guidance.

The Staff has informally advised us that they are evaluating the potential implications of the Food Marketing Institute decision on Rule 24b-2, Rule 406 & other rules that involve confidential treatment requests under FOIA.  However, the Staff does not believe that Item 601(b) is implicated by the decision, since the new procedures relate to situations in which information need not to be filed with the SEC, rather than situations in which companies are seeking to use FOIA exemption 4 to protect information that has been filed.

Insider Trading: Lawyers Are Increasingly In the Cross-Hairs

Over the past year or so, we’ve blogged about a number of insider trading cases in which lawyers were involved directly or, sometimes, indirectly.  If it seems like lawyers are being implicated more in insider trading cases, this Arnold & Porter memo says there’s a reason for that – they are:

A recent series of insider trading actions charging senior lawyers in legal departments of prominent public companies suggests that insider trading by lawyers may be on the rise. Over the past several months, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has brought enforcement actions charging insider trading in advance of earnings announcements by senior lawyers at Apple and SeaWorld. In a third action, filed in early May 2019, the general counsel of Cintas Corporation was an unwitting victim of a house guest, a lifelong friend, who, the SEC alleges, surreptitiously pilfered merger related information from a folder in the lawyer’s home office.

These actions are noteworthy not only for the brazenness of the conduct involved, but because they suggest that insider trading by lawyers remains a “profound problem.” And, as the case of the Cintas general counsel demonstrates, innocent lawyers may also fall prey to others, such as close friends and family, looking to exploit their access to material nonpublic information, or MNPI.

Here at TheCorporateCounsel.net, we’re on record that if you’re a corporate officer who engages in insider trading, then – as one of my high school football coaches used to say – “you’re stuck on stupid.” But if you need more convincing, read the memo’s review of the recent proceedings involving lawyers, and the actions that companies & law departments can take to mitigate their insider trading risks.

John Jenkins