Cite as: 510 U. S. 487 (1994)
Ginsburg, J., concurring in judgment
termination that disclosure was necessary to vindicate the public interest in promoting federal-sector collective bargaining—the interest Congress identified when it enacted the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (Labor Statute).2
The Privacy Act interposed no bar to disclosure under the Labor Statute, these courts reasoned, because the Privacy Act allows disclosure when the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) so requires, see 5 U. S. C. § 552a(b)(2), and the FOIA balancing of public interest in disclosure against the asserted privacy interest, see ante, at 495, tipped decisively in favor of disclosure. The public interest the Courts of Appeals balanced was the promotion of collective bargaining; the privacy interest, keeping employees' names and addresses from their bargaining representative.
Reporters Committee, however, changed the FOIA calculus that underlies these prodisclosure decisions. In Reporters Committee, the Court adopted a restrictive definition of the "public interest in disclosure," holding that interest to be circumscribed by FOIA's "core purpose": the purpose of "open[ing] agency action to the light of public scrutiny" and advancing "public understanding of the operations or activities of the government." 489 U. S., at 774-776 (internal quotation marks and emphasis omitted). As the Court observes today, disclosure of employees' home addresses to their bargaining representatives would not advance this purpose. See ante, at 497. With Reporters Committee as its guide, the Court traverses the "convoluted path of statutory cross-references," ante, at 495, from the Labor Statute to the Pri-2 See 5 U. S. C. § 7101(a) ("labor organizations and collective bargaining in the civil service are in the public interest"); § 7114(b)(4)(B) (agency must disclose information "necessary for full and proper discussion, understanding, and negotiation of subjects within the scope of collective bargaining," unless disclosure is "prohibited by law").
505
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