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Page Number: 12

8 

NASA v. NELSON 

Opinion of the Court 

II 
As  noted,  respondents  contend  that  portions  of  SF–85
and Form 42 violate their “right to informational privacy.”
Brief for Respondents 15.  This Court considered a similar 
claim  in  Whalen,  429  U. S.  589,  which  concerned  New 
York’s  practice  of  collecting  “the  names  and  addresses  of 
all persons” prescribed dangerous drugs with  both “legiti-
mate  and  illegitimate  uses.”    Id.,  at  591.    In  discussing
that  claim,  the  Court  said  that  “[t]he  cases  sometimes
characterized as protecting ‘privacy’ ” actually involved “at 
least two different kinds of interests”: one, an “interest in 
avoiding  disclosure  of  personal  matters”;6  the  other,  an 
interest  in  “making  certain  kinds  of  important  decisions”
free  from  government  interference.7   The  patients  who
brought  suit  in  Whalen  argued  that  New  York’s  statute
“threaten[ed]  to  impair”  both  their  “nondisclosure”  inter-
ests  and  their  interests  in  making  healthcare  decisions 
independently.  Id.,  at  600.  The  Court,  however,  upheld 
the statute as a “reasonable exercise of New York’s broad 
police powers.”  Id., at 598. 

Whalen  acknowledged  that  the  disclosure  of  “private
information”  to  the  State  was  an  “unpleasant  invasion  of 
privacy,”  id.,  at  602,  but  the  Court  pointed  out  that  the 
New  York  statute  contained  “security  provisions”  that 

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6 429  U. S.,  at  598–599,  and  n. 25  (citing  Olmstead  v.  United  States, 
277  U.  S.  438,  478  (1928)  (Brandeis,  J.,  dissenting)  (describing  “the 
right  to  be  let  alone”  as  “the  right  most  valued  by  civilized  men”); 
Griswold  v.  Connecticut,  381  U. S.  479,  483  (1965)  (“[T]he  First
Amendment  has  a  penumbra  where  privacy  is  protected  from  govern-
mental  intrusion”);  Stanley  v.  Georgia,  394  U. S.  557,  559,  568  (1969); 
California Bankers Assn. v. Shultz, 416 U. S. 21, 79 (1974) (Douglas, J., 
dissenting); and id., at 78 (Powell, J., concurring)). 

7 429 U. S., at 599–600, and n. 26 (citing Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 
(1973); Doe v. Bolton, 410 U. S. 179 (1973); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 
1 (1967); Griswold v. Connecticut, supra; Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 
U. S. 510 (1925); Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390 (1923); and Allgeyer 
v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 587 (1897)).