Opinion ID: 1860963
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Physicians' Right to Privacy

Text: Amicus M.C.L.U. asserts that disclosure will deprive physicians of their rights to both privacy and property. The property right claimed is to practice medicine according to his or her best judgment and without undue interference by the state. Whether physicians have the property right claimed, independent of their patients' rights to receive the services involved, has not been decided. Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 113, 96 S.Ct. 2868, 2874, 49 L.Ed.2d 826, 833 (1976). Even if such a right exists, as is noted in the preceding section, disclosure itself does not constitute interference by the state. Thus, the physician's right to privacy is the only right not derived from the patients that can serve as a ground for injunctive relief. In Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152, 93 S.Ct. 705, 726, 35 L.Ed.2d 147, 176 (1973), the court stated: The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, going back perhaps as far as Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, 141 U.S. 250, 251, 11 S.Ct. 1000, 35 L.Ed. 734 (1891), the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.   These decisions make it clear that only personal rights that can be deemed `fundamental' or `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty,' Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S.Ct. 149, 82 L.Ed. 288 (1937), are included in this guarantee of personal privacy. Thus, the question presented by the assertion of the physicians' right of privacy is whether the personal right claimed  that is, the right of medical assistance providers to keep the details of their dealings with the department of public welfare from becoming public knowledge  is fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The right claimed is not, as amicus argues, the right not to have all their professional and business dealings made public. The department does not propose to disclose all their professional and business dealings. Only services that are paid for with public funds are involved. The providers contracted with the department to provide medical care to medical assistance patients and were paid by the department for services rendered pursuant to the agreement. The intervenors seek disclosure of information concerning only those services and payments. Viewed in this manner, the contention that disclosure would infringe the physicians' personal rights of privacy loses much of its force. The public has a right to know about the workings of government. The United States Supreme Court stated in Cox Broadcasting Corp. v. Cohn, 420 U.S. 469, 491, 95 S.Ct. 1029, 1044, 43 L.Ed.2d 328, 347 (1975):    [I]n a society in which each individual has but limited time and resources with which to observe at first hand the operations of his government, he relies necessarily upon the press to bring to him in convenient form the facts of those operations. Great responsibility is accordingly placed upon the news media to report fully and accurately the proceedings of government, and official records and documents open to the public are the basic data of governmental operations. Without the information provided by the press most of us and many of our representatives would be unable to vote intelligently or to register opinions on the administration of government generally. In opposition to the public's need for information in this case is the doctors' asserted right to prevent public disclosure of their names. In Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 713, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 1166, 47 L.Ed.2d 405, 421 (1976), the court held that no personal right of privacy was infringed when a police department distributed a flyer identifying the plaintiff as an Active Shoplifter to local businesses. The court stated:    In Roe the Court pointed out that the personal rights found in this guarantee of personal privacy must be limited to those which are `fundamental' or `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' as described in Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, 58 S.Ct. 149, 152, 82 L.Ed. 288, 292 (1937). The activities detailed as being within this definition were ones very different from that for which respondent claims constitutional protection  matters relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education. In these areas it has been held that there are limitations on the States' power to substantively regulate conduct. Respondent's claim is far afield from this line of decisions. He claims constitutional protection against the disclosure of the fact of his arrest on a shoplifting charge. His claim is based, not upon any challenge to the State's ability to restrict his freedom of action in a sphere contended to be `private,' but instead on a claim that the State may not publicize a record of an official act such as an arrest. None of our substantive privacy decisions hold this or anything like this, and we decline to enlarge them in this manner. The instant case, like Paul v. Davis , involves the disclosure of records of official acts. As previously noted, that disclosure does not restrict the doctors' freedom of action in a private sphere. Moreover, the information to be disclosed cannot be characterized as purely personal since it concerns the expenditure of public funds. In Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 459, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 2798, 53 L.Ed.2d 867, 901 (1977), the court distinguished between the former president's personal matters for example, `extremely private communications between him and, among others, his wife, his daughters, his physician, lawyer and clergyman, and his close friends as well as personal diary dictabelts and his wife's personal files.' 408 F.Supp., at 359. and matters relating to acts done in his public capacity. The same distinction can be made between a doctor's private records and the records of the department of public welfare's payments to him. The latter records are not extremely private communications. It must, therefore, be concluded that disclosure of the information sought here will not infringe physicians' constitutional rights of privacy. Appellants have failed to establish that they have any statutory or constitutional right to prevent disclosure of the requested information. Since disclosure will not violate appellants' rights, the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying their plea for injunctive relief and its decision is affirmed. Affirmed.