Torres Consulting & Law Group, LLC v. National Aeronautics & Space Administration, 666 F. App'x 643

Plaintiff Torres Consulting and Law Group sought contractor payroll records from NASA under FOIA.
NASA withheld the records in full, invoking FOIA Exemptions 4 (confidential commercial/financial information) and 6 (personal privacy).
The district court granted summary judgment to NASA; Torres appealed.
The parties submitted competing declarations about whether disclosure would cause substantial competitive harm to contractor RTD Construction, creating a factual dispute.
The Ninth Circuit (panel) reviewed de novo, applied its en banc guidance that factual disputes in FOIA require a bench trial or adversary hearing, and found a material factual dispute as to Exemption 4.
The court held that, once identifying information (names, addresses, SSNs) is redacted, payroll data implicates only a trivial privacy interest under Exemption 6 and thus must be disclosed unless Exemption 4 applies.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Exemption 4 shields payroll details (rates, hours, earnings) because disclosure would cause substantial competitive harm to contractor RTD	Release would allow competitors to estimate and undercut RTD’s bids, causing substantial competitive injury	Disclosure would not likely cause substantial competitive harm; NASA asserted harm and withheld records	Reversed summary judgment on Exemption 4; material factual dispute exists and remand for bench trial/adversary hearing to resolve competitive-harm fact issue
Whether Exemption 6 bars disclosure of payroll figures (tax deductions, withholding, net earnings) after redaction of identifiers	Payroll figures remain private and exempt	Once names/SSNs/addresses are redacted, any privacy interest is trivial and disclosure is required	Reversed district court on Exemption 6; redacted payroll data (excluding identifiers) must be disclosed because privacy interest is de minimis
Segregability of non-exempt information	Torres sought disclosure of segregable non-exempt data	NASA withheld categories; court must assess segregability on remand	Remanded for segregability analysis after Exemption 4 is resolved
Attorney’s fees request procedure	Torres requested fees in brief	Must follow Ninth Circuit Rule 39-1.6	Not adjudicated on merits; briefed request must comply with Rule 39-1.6

Frazee v. U.S. Forest Serv., 97 F.3d 367 (9th Cir. 1996) (general FOIA/exemption discussion)
GC Micro Corp. v. Def. Logistics Agency, 33 F.3d 1109 (9th Cir. 1994) (standard for confidential commercial information under Exemption 4)
Nat’l Parks & Conservation Ass’n v. Morton, 498 F.2d 765 (D.C. Cir. 1974) (competitive-harm/confidentiality guidance)
Gulf & W. Indus., Inc. v. United States, 615 F.2d 527 (D.C. Cir. 1979) (disclosure enabling competitors to undercut bids constitutes substantial competitive injury)
Lion Raisins Inc. v. U.S. Dep’t of Agric., 354 F.3d 1072 (9th Cir. 2004) (treating substantial-competitive-harm determination as factual)
Prudential Locations LLC v. U.S. Dep’t of Hous. & Urban Dev., 739 F.3d 424 (9th Cir. 2013) (Exemption 6 balancing framework)
Elec. Frontier Found. v. Office of the Dir. of Nat’l Intelligence, 639 F.3d 876 (9th Cir. 2011) (public interest/privacy balancing under Exemption 6)
Yonemoto v. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs, 686 F.3d 681 (9th Cir. 2012) (threshold non-de minimis privacy interest requirement under Exemption 6)
U.S. Dep’t of State v. Ray, 502 U.S. 164 (1991) (Exemption 6 covers only information linked to an identifiable person)
U.S. Dep’t of State v. Wash. Post Co., 456 U.S. 595 (1982) (information unrelated to any particular person does not satisfy Exemption 6)
Dep’t of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352 (1976) (Exemption 6 intended for identifiable-person records rather than unidentified statistical information)