16
Opinion of the Court
of the question for reasons already explored. There is simply no support for the exemption in the statutory text, which we have elsewhere insisted be read strictly in order to serve FOIA's mandate of broad disclosure,7 which was obviously expected and intended to affect Government operations. In FOIA, after all, a new conception of Government conduct was enacted into law, " 'a general philosophy of full agency disclosure.' " Department of Justice v. Tax Analysts, 492 U. S., at 142 (quoting S. Rep. No. 813, 89th Cong., 1st Sess., 3 (1965)). "Congress believed that this philosophy, put into practice, would help 'ensure an informed citizenry, vital to the functioning of a democratic society.' " 492 U. S., at 142 (quoting NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U. S. 214, 242 (1978)). Congress had to realize that not every secret under the old law would be secret under the new.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
7 The Department does not attempt to argue that Congress specifically envisioned that Exemption 5 would cover communications pursuant to the Indian trust responsibility, or any other trust responsibility. Although as a general rule we are hesitant to construe statutes in light of legislative inaction, see Bob Jones Univ. v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 600 (1983), we note that Congress has twice considered specific proposals to protect Indian trust information, see Indian Amendment to Freedom of Information Act: Hearings on S. 2652 before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. (1976); Indian Trust Information Protection Act of 1978, S. 2773, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. (1978). We do so because these proposals confirm the commonsense reading that we give Exemption 5 today, as well as to emphasize that nobody in the Federal Government should be surprised by this reading.
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