EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, Petitioner, v. ASSOCIATED DRY GOODS CORPORATION.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 limits the authority of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to make public disclosure of information it has obtained in investigating and attempting to resolve a claim of employment discrimination.1 We granted certiorari in this case to consider whether the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit was correct in holding that a prelitigation disclosure of information in a Commission file to the employee who filed the Title VII claim is a "public" disclosure within the meaning of the statutory restrictions. 445 U.S. 926, 100 S.Ct. 1311, 63 L.Ed.2d 758.2

* This case arose when the Commission sought evidence with respect to discrimination charges filed against the Joseph Horne Co., a division of the respondent, Associated Dry Goods Corp. Horne operates retail department stores in Pennsylvania. Between 1971 and 1973, seven Horne employees filed employment discrimination charges with the Commission, six alleging sex discrimination and one alleging racial discrimination. The Commission began its investigation by requesting Horne to provide the employment records of the complainants, and statistics, documents, and other information relating to Horne's general personnel practices. Horne refused to provide the information unless the Commission agreed beforehand not to disclose any of the requested material to the charging parties. The Commission refused to give this assurance, explaining its practice of making limited disclosure to a charging party of information in his and other files when he needs that information in connection with a potential lawsuit.3 When Horne continued to refuse to provide the information without an assurance of absolute secrecy, the Commission subpoenaed the material. After the Commission rejected Horne's petition for revocation of the agency subpoena, the respondent filed this suit, asking the District Court to declare that the Commission's limited disclosure practices violated Title VII, and to enjoin the Commission from enforcing the subpoena.4

The District Court, concluding that the Commission's disclosure of confidential information to charging parties upsets Title VII's scheme of negotiation and settlement, held that the regulations and the provisions in the Compliance Manual covering special disclosure to charging parties violate Title VII. Accordingly, the court enforced the subpoena only on the condition that the Commission treat charging parties as members of the "public" to whom it cannot disclose any information in its files. 454 F.Supp. 387 (ED Va.). The Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court's judgment. EEOC v. Joseph Horne Co., 607 F.2d 1075.

In enacting Title VII, Congress combined administrative and judicial means of eliminating employment discrimination. A person claiming to be the victim of discrimination must first file a charge with the Commission. The Commission must then serve notice of the charge on the employer, and begin an investigation to determine whether there is reasonable cause to believe the charge is true. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b). If it finds no such reasonable cause, the Commission must dismiss the charge. Ibid. If it does find reasonable cause, it must try to eliminate the alleged discriminatory practice "by informal methods of conference, conciliation, and persuasion." Ibid.5 If its attempts at conciliation fail, the Commission may bring a civil action against the employer. § 2000e-5(f)(1). But Title VII also makes private lawsuits by aggrieved employees an important part of its means of enforcement. If the Commission dismisses the charge, the employee may immediately file a private action. Ibid. And regardless of whether the Commission finds reasonable cause, the employee may bring an action 180 days after filing the charge if by that time the Commission has not filed its own lawsuit. Ibid.6

Title VII gives the Commission two formal means of obtaining information when it investigates a charge: The Commission may examine and copy evidence in the possession of the respondent employer, § 2000e-8(a), and subpoena evidence and documents, § 2000e-9. Congress imposed on the Commission a duty to maintain this information in confidence. Section 706(b) of Title VII directs that "[c]harges shall not be made public by the Commission."7 If the Commission attempts informally to resolve a charge for which it has found reasonable cause, it cannot make "public" anything said or done in the course of the negotiations between the Commission and the parties; any Commission employee violating this prohibition faces criminal penalties. Ibid. Section 709(e) of the statute supplements these prohibitions by making it a misdemeanor for any officer or employee of the Commission "to make public in any manner whatever any information" the Commission obtains through its investigative powers before the institution of any proceeding involving this information.8

Title VII nowhere defines "public." In its regulation governing disclosure, the Commission has construed the statute's prohibition of "public" release of information to permit prelitigation disclosure of charges and of investigative information to the parties where such disclosure "is deemed necessary for securing appropriate relief." 29 CFR § 1601.22 (1979). Specifically, the Commission has also created special disclosure rules permitting release of information in its files to charging parties or their attorneys, aggrieved persons in whose behalf charges have been filed and the persons or organizations who have filed the charges in their behalf, and respondents and their attorneys, so long as the request for the information is made in connection with contemplated litigation.9 Though normally a person can see information in the file only for the case in which he is directly involved, the Commission sometimes allows a prospective litigant to see information in files of cases brought by other employees against the same employer where that information is relevant and material to the litigant's case. EEOC Compliance Manual § 83.7(c).10 Before disclosing any information, however, the Commission expunges the names, identifying characteristics, and statements of any witnesses who have been promised anonymity, as well as the names of any other respondents.11 Moreover, any person requesting confidential information must execute a written agreement not to disclose the information to any other person, except as part of the normal course of litigation after a suit is filed.12

For the reasons that follow, we have concluded that Congress did not include charging parties within the "public" to whom disclosure of confidential information is illegal under the provisions of Title VII here at issue. Section 706(b) states that "[c]harges shall not be made public." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b). The charge, of course, cannot be concealed from the charging party. Nor can it be concealed from the respondent, since the statute also expressly requires the Commission to serve notice of the charge upon the respondent within 10 days of its filing. Ibid. Thus, the "public" to whom the statute forbids disclosure of charges cannot logically include the parties to the agency proceeding.13 And we must infer that Congress intended the same distinction when it used the word "public" in § 709(e), 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-8(e). The two statutory provisions treat essentially the same subject, and, absent any congressional indication to the contrary, we must assume that "public" means the same thing in the two sections.14

The very limited legislative history of the disclosure provisions supports this reading. The bill passed by the House contained no restrictions on public disclosure. See H.R. Rep. No. 914, 88th Cong., 1st Sess., 13 (1963), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1974, p. 2355.15 The disclosure provisions were made part of the substitute bill which Senators Dirksen and Humphrey introduced in the Senate, and which the House later passed without amendment. See 110 Cong.Rec. 12819 (1964). Senator Humphrey, the cosponsor of the bill, explained that the purpose of the disclosure provisions was to prevent wide or unauthorized dissemination of unproved charges, not limited disclosures necessary to carry out the Commission's functions: "[T]his is a ban onpublicizing and not on such disclosure as is necessary to the carrying out of the Commission's duties under the statute. . . . The amendment is not intended to hamper Commission investigations or proper cooperation with other State and Federal agencies, but rather is aimed at the making available to the general public of unproven charges." Id., at 12723 (emphasis added).16 The parties to an agency proceeding are hardly members of the "general public," especially since, as common sense and the express language of § 706(b) show, see supra, at 598, they always have available to them the charge—proved or unproved—in the case to which they are parties.17

This reading of the statute, moreover, is consistent with the coordinated scheme of administrative and judicial enforcement which Congress created to enforce Title VII. See supra, at 595. First, limited disclosure to the parties can speed the Commission's required investigation: the Commission can more readily obtain information informally—rather than through its formal powers under 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-9—if it can present the parties with specific facts for them to corroborate or rebut. Second, limited disclosure enhances the Commission's ability to carry out its statutory responsibility to resolve charges through informal conciliation and negotiation: A party is far more likely to settle when he has enough information to be able to assess the strengths and weaknesses of his opponent's case as well as his own.18

The respondent argues vigorously that the disclosure of investigative information to charging parties may encourage many lawsuits that would not otherwise be filed, and thus contravene the congressional policy of relying on administrative resolution and settlement. But the effect of limited disclosure may be just the opposite. The employee has little to gain from filing a futile lawsuit, and indeed faces the possibility of an adverse fee award if the suit is frivolous. Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 421, 98 S.Ct. 694, 700, 54 L.Ed.2d 648. Pointless litigation burdens both the parties and the federal courts, and it is in the interest of all concerned that the charging party have adequate information in assessing the feasibility of litigation. Under the respondent's view of the statute, however, the charging party would be able to obtain that information only after filing a lawsuit. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-8(e). Thus, a charging party would have to file suit in a hopeless case in order to discover that the case was hopeless.19 The Commission's disclosure practice may therefore help fulfill the statutory goal of maximum possible reliance upon voluntary conciliation and administrative resolution of claims.

In any event, even if disclosure may encourage litigation in some instances, that result is not inconsistent with the ultimate purposes of Title VII.20 The private right of action remains an important part of Title VII's scheme of enforcement, Alexander v. Gardner-Denver Co., 415 U.S. 36, 45, 94 S.Ct. 1011, 1018, 39 L.Ed.2d 147. Congress considered the charging party a "private attorney general," whose role in enforcing the ban on discrimination is parallel to that of the Commission itself. Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, supra, at 421, 98 S.Ct., at 700.21 The private litigant could hardly play that role without access to information needed to assess the feasibility of litigation.

Nevertheless, though Congress allowed disclosure of investigative information in a charging party's file to that party himself, nothing in the statute or its legislative history reveals any intent to allow the Commission to reveal to that charging party information in the files of other charging parties who have brought claims against the same employer. See EEOC Compliance Manual § 83.7(c).22 As noted earlier, the charging party cannot logically be a member of the "public" to whom disclosure is forbidden by § 706(b) of Title VII, and, by extension, cannot be a member of the public under § 709(e). See supra, at 598. The reason, however, is that the charging party is obviously aware of the charge he has filed, and so cannot belong to the public to which Congress referred when it directed that "[c]harges shall not be made public." 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(b).

But there is no reason why the charging party should know the content of any other employee's charge, and he must be considered a member of the public with respect to charges filed by other people. With respect to all files other than his own, he is a stranger.

The Commission notes that it often consolidates substantially similar charges for investigation, and in other instances draws upon information generated in an earlier investigation of the same employer. The Commission therefore argues that because information in one party's file may be directly relevant to another party's charge, it would be burdensome for it to have to reproduce the generally relevant information for each file, and unfair to a charging party to deny him access to generally relevant information that, by chance of timing, appears first and fully in another party's file.

But the Commission's argument is merely one of administrative convenience, and such convenience cannot override the prohibitions in the statute. Statistics and other information about an employer's general practices may certainly be relevant to individual charges of discrimination, McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. Green, 411 U.S. 792, 804-805, 93 S.Ct. 1817, 1825, 36 L.Ed.2d 668, but by including such information, in full or summary form, in each individual charging party's file, the Commission can fully comply with the statute while giving each party the information he needs to weigh the strength of his own case.

The Court of Appeals erred, therefore, in holding that the respondent had a categorical right to refuse to comply with the EEOC subpoena unless the Commission assured it that the information supplied would be held in absolute secrecy. The respondent was entitled only to assurance that each employee filing a charge against Horne would see information in no file other than his or her own. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered.

Justice POWELL took no part in the decision of this case. Justice REHNQUIST took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Justice BLACKMUN, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

In my view, the proper standard for evaluating disclosures of information by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was expressed by Senator Humphrey, the cosponsor of the bill that became Title VII. As the Court notes, ante, at 598-600, Senator Humphrey stated that the prohibitions against public disclosure in §§ 706(b) and 709(e) of Title VII, 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000e-5(b) and 2000e-8(e), do not forbid "such disclosure as is necessary to the carrying out of the Commission's duties under the statute." 110 Cong.Rec. 12723 (1964). I would adhere to this standard and require the Commission to justify any disclosure of its investigative files by demonstrating that the disclosure is "necessary to the carrying out of [its] duties."* Because the Commission must communicate charges to respondents, investigate the charges that have been filed, determine whether there is reasonable cause to believe that the charges are true, inform the parties of its determination, and attempt to settle charges, see § 706(b), there undoubtedly are many occasions when it must disclose some of its information to the parties and to witnesses. The Court of Appeals erred, therefore, when it held that no disclosure to parties and witnesses is permitted before a suit is filed.

The Commission, however, has not pointed to any provision of Title VII imposing a duty upon it to allow charging parties access to its records "for the purpose of reviewing information in the case file in connection with pending or contemplated litigation." EEOC Compliance Manual § 83.3(a). I do not find it necessary to resolve the disagreement between the Commission and respondent over whether the Commission's prelitigation disclosure rules are a help or a hindrance to the effective enforcement of Title VII. I simply find no provision of the statute authorizing the Commission to assist charging parties who are trying to decide whether to file a suit.

The Court of Appeals held that the pre-litigation disclosure rules are invalid. I would affirm that part of its judgment.

Justice STEVENS, dissenting.

The Court construes a prohibition against public disclosure as an authorization for prelitigation discovery. A principal basis for the Court's unusual construction of rather plain statutory language is that because a charging party must know the contents of a charge, that party cannot be a member of the public to which disclosure is prohibited. In my view, the reason that the statute is not violated by the charging party's knowledge of the contents of a charge is that he is the source of the information contained in the charge; no disclosure occurs when he reads what he has written, regardless of whether he is a member of the public.

To encourage prompt and full disclosure of relevant information to a neutral conciliator, Congress assured employees and employers alike that no public disclosure of such information would occur prior to the institution of formal proceedings. To enforce this assurance, the statute imposes criminal penalties on Commission personnel who disclose information to the public. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-8.1 It seems fanciful to me to conclude that Congress intended to prohibit direct disclosure while permitting indirect disclosure. That result, however, is the consequence of the Court's view that direct disclosure may be made to a fairly large group of persons who can then pass the information along to others.2 Although Commission rules do provide that such persons shall agree not to make disclosed information public to others, neither the statutes nor the regulations contain any sanction for the violation of that sort of agreement.3 If Congress had regarded this group as members of some nonpublic category, I believe that Congress would have expressly prohibited them from making any public disclosure of the confidential information they receive from the Commission.4 The Court's reading of the statute shows little respect for the drafting ability of Congress.

I therefore agree with the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that the statute should be interpreted in accordance with its plain meaning.

Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.