Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/10pdf/09-530.pdf
Page Number: 32

4 

NASA v. NELSON 

SCALIA, J., concurring in judgment 

Amendment,  not  the  more  generalized  notion  of  substan-
tive  due  process,  must  be  the  guide  for  analyzing  these
claims.”  County  of  Sacramento  v.  Lewis,  523  U. S.  833, 
842  (1998)  (internal  quotation  marks  omitted;  alteration
in original).  Here, the Ninth Circuit rejected respondents’ 
Fourth  Amendment  argument,  correctly  holding  that  the 
Form  42  inquiries  to  third  parties  were  not  Fourth
Amendment “searches” under United States v. Miller, 425 
U. S.  435  (1976),  and  that  the  Fourth  Amendment  does
not prohibit the Government from asking questions about
private information.  530 F. 3d 865, 876–877 (2008).  That 
should have been the end of the matter.  Courts should not 
use  the  Due  Process  Clause  as  putty  to  fill  up  gaps  they 
deem  unsightly  in  the  protections  provided  by  other  con-
stitutional provisions.

In  sum,  I  would  simply  hold  that  there  is  no  constitu-
tional  right  to  “informational  privacy.”    Besides  being 
consistent with constitutional text and tradition, this view 
has  the  attractive  benefit  of  resolving  this  case  without
resort  to  the  Court’s  exegesis  on  the  Government’s  legiti-
mate  interest  in  identifying  contractor  drug  abusers  and 
the  comfortingly  narrow  scope  of  NASA’s  “routine  use” 
regulations.  I shall not fill the U. S. Reports with further
explanation of the incoherence of the Court’s “substantive
due process” doctrine in its many manifestations, since the 
Court  does  not  play  the  substantive-due-process  card.
Instead,  it  states  that  it  will  “assume,  without  deciding” 
that  there  exists  a  right  to  informational  privacy,  ante, 
at 1. 

The Court’s sole justification for its decision to “assume, 
without  deciding”  is  that  the  Court  made  the  same  mis-
take before—in two 33-year-old cases, Whalen v. Roe, 429 
U. S.  589  (1977),  and  Nixon  v.  Administrator  of  General 
Services,  433  U. S.  425  (1977).*    Ante,  at  11.    But  stare 

—————— 

* Contrary  to  the  Court’s  protestation,  ante,  at  11,  n. 10,  the  Court’s