The case involved, as a lower court judge put it, the collision of “a good many laudable public policies,” including ones “to ensure the safety of the nation’s airways, to root out waste, fraud and abuse in the Social Security system and to secure personal privacy of citizens.”
By the time the case reached the Supreme Court, though, it had boiled down to a single issue: What did Congress mean when it said people could sue for the “actual damages” suffered as a consequence of violations of the Privacy Act of 1974?
The question for the justices was whether that term referred only to monetary losses — medical bills, say — or also to emotional distress that did not give rise to out-of-pocket expenses.
The plaintiff, Stanmore C. Cooper, a private pilot, conceded that he had not lost any money because one government agency told another that he was infected with H.I.V. But he said the disclosure had caused him acute emotional distress, including “sleeplessness, loss of appetite, physical tension, agitation, isolation from friends and anxiety.”
Mr. Cooper’s most vocal ally on the Supreme Court was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said Congress must have contemplated allowing suits for emotional distress since that is the kind of harm most characteristic of privacy violations.
“The person who is subject to this, to this embarrassment, this humiliation, doesn’t have out-of-pocket costs, but is terribly distressed, nervous, anxious, and all the rest,” she said.
Eric J. Feigin, a lawyer for the government, said the law should be read narrowly. The term “actual damages” is ambiguous, he said. But that ambiguity, he went on, should count in favor of the government under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, which bars lawsuits for money against the government without its consent. Such consent must be specific, he said, and ambiguous consent is not consent.
Justice Antonin Scalia appeared to embrace that argument.
“Once you establish that it isn’t clear,” he said of the statutory language, “then you trigger the rule that waivers of sovereign immunity will not be considered to have any scope except that scope which is clear.”
Justice Scalia also questioned whether disclosures between government agencies should subject the government to lawsuits based on claims of emotional distress.
A lawyer for Mr. Cooper, Raymond A. Cardozo, responded that the court’s interpretation of the term “actual damages” will apply in all sorts of settings, including government attempts to silence whistleblowers by leaking information about them to the press.
Mr. Cooper’s case arose from an investigation by the Department of Transportation and the Social Security Administration called “Operation Safe Pilot.” It cross-referenced information held by government agencies concerning about 45,000 pilots in Northern California.
The investigators discovered that in 1996 Mr. Cooper had applied for Social Security disability benefits, complaining of severe symptoms of H.I.V. infection. He received benefits for several months until his health improved.
In the years that followed, Mr. Cooper failed to tell the Federal Aviation Administration about his H.I.V. status on a form that prospective pilots are required to complete. When the omissions were discovered, Mr. Cooper pleaded guilty to the crime of making false statements to the government, paying a $1,000 fine.
Mr. Cooper then sued the government for violating the Privacy Act, which was enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandal.
“Congress passed this act to restore the citizens’ faith in their government,” Mr. Cardozo told the justices on Wednesday, “and it made a solemn promise to the American citizens that in cases of intentional and willful violation, the United States shall be liable for actual damages. Today, the government is proposing that ‘actual damages’ be read in a way that renders this act virtually irrelevant. That makes a mockery of that solemn promise.”
Only eight members of the court heard the case, Federal Aviation Administration v. Cooper, No. 10-1024. Justice Elena Kagan did not participate, presumably because she had worked on it as United States solicitor general.