Opinion ID: 3050864
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Informational Privacy Claims

Text: [7] The district court similarly underestimated the likelihood that Appellants would succeed on their informational privacy claim. We have repeatedly acknowledged that the Constitution protects an “individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters.” In re Crawford, 194 F.3d 954, 958 (9th Cir. 1999). This interest covers a wide range of personal matters, including sexual activity, Thorne v. City of El Segundo, 726 F.2d 459 (9th Cir. 1983) (holding that question640 NELSON v. NASA ing police applicant about her prior sexual activity violated her right to informational privacy), medical information, Norman-Bloodsaw v. Lawrence Berkeley Lab., 135 F.3d 1260, 1269 (9th Cir. 1998) (“The constitutionally protected privacy interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters clearly encompasses medical information and its confidentiality”), and financial matters, Crawford, 194 F.3d at 958 (agreeing that public disclosure of social security numbers may implicate the right to informational privacy in “an era of rampant identity theft”). If the government’s actions compel disclosure of private information, it “has the burden of showing that its use of the information would advance a legitimate state interest and that its actions are narrowly tailored to meet the legitimate interest.” Crawford, 194 F.3d at 959 (internal quotation marks omitted). [8] The district court correctly concluded that the requested information in this case is sufficiently private to implicate the right to informational privacy. SF 85 requires the applicant to disclose any illegal drug use within the past year, along with any treatment or counseling received. The Supreme Court has made clear, in the Fourth Amendment context, that individuals’ reasonable expectations of privacy in their medical history includes information about drug use, Skinner v. R.R. Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 617 (1989), and, by analogy, drug treatment or counseling. Moreover, Form 42 inquiries distributed as part of the NACI—omitted from the district court’s analysis as a result of its erroneous ripeness holding—are even more probing. Form 42 solicits “any adverse information” concerning “financial integrity,” “abuse of alcohol and/or drugs,” “mental or emotional stability,” and “other matters.” These open-ended questions are designed to elicit a wide range of adverse, private information that “is not generally disclosed by individuals to the public,” Crawford, 194 F.3d at 958; accordingly, they must be deemed to implicate the right to informational privacy. [9] Considering the breadth of Form 42’s questions, it is difficult to see how they could be narrowly tailored to meet NELSON v. NASA 641 any legitimate need, much less the specific interests that Federal Appellees have offered to justify the new requirement. Asking for “any adverse information about this person’s employment, residence, or activities” may solicit some information relevant to “identity,” “national security,” or “protecting federal information systems,” but there are absolutely no safeguards in place to limit the disclosures to information relevant to these interests. Instead, the form invites the recipient to reveal any negative information of which he or she is aware. There is nothing “narrowly tailored” about such a broad inquisition. [10] Finally, the context in which the written inquiries are posed further supports Appellants’ claim. In Thorne v. City of El Segundo, 726 F.2d 459 (9th Cir. 1983), we focused not only on the private nature of questions asked, but also on the lack of standards governing the inquiry. We held that questioning a female police applicant about her past sexual relations with another officer in the department violated her constitutional right to informational privacy, id. at 468, finding that many of the questions posed went beyond any relevant lines of questioning, id. at 469-70. More importantly, we noted that the city had not set any standards for inquiring about the private information. Id. at 470. “When the state’s questions directly intrude on the core of a person’s constitutionally protected privacy and associational interests . . . , an unbounded, standardless inquiry, even if founded upon a legitimate state interest, cannot withstand the heightened scrutiny with which we must view the state’s action.” Id. In this case, the government’s questions stem from SF 85’s extremely broad authorization, allowing it “to obtain any information” from any source, subject to other releases being necessary only in some vague and unspecified contexts. Federal Appellees have steadfastly refused to provide any standards narrowly tailoring the investigations to the legitimate interests they offer. Given that Form 42’s open-ended and highly private questions are authorized by this broad, standardless waiver and do not appear narrowly tailored to any 642 NELSON v. NASA legitimate government interest, the district court erred in finding that Appellants were unlikely to succeed on their informational privacy claim.