Opinion ID: 2431314
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: rights of privacy

Text: No language specifying rights of privacy, as such, appears in either the Federal or State Constitution. The Commonwealth recognizes such rights exist, but takes the position that, since they are implicit rather than explicit, our Court should march in lock step with the United States Supreme Court in declaring when such rights exist. Such is not the formulation of federalism. On the contrary, under our system of dual sovereignty, it is our responsibility to interpret and apply our state constitution independently. We are not bound by decisions of the United States Supreme Court when deciding whether a state statute impermissibly infringes upon individual rights guaranteed in the State Constitution so long as state constitutional protection does not fall below the federal floor, meaning the minimum guarantee of individual rights under the United States Constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court. Oregon v. Hass, 420 U.S. 714, 719, 95 S.Ct. 1215, 1219, 43 L.Ed.2d 570, 575 (1975). The holding in Oregon v. Hass is: [A] State is free as a matter of its own law to impose greater restrictions on police activity than those this [United States Supreme] Court holds to be necessary upon federal constitutional standards. [Emphasis original.] Contrary to popular belief, the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution represents neither the primary source nor the maximum guarantee of state constitutional liberty. Our own constitutional guarantees against the intrusive power of the state do not derive from the Federal Constitution. The adoption of the Federal Constitution in 1791 was preceded by state constitutions developed over the preceding 15 years, and, while there is, of course, overlap between state and federal constitutional guarantees of individual rights, they are by no means identical. State constitutional law documents and the writings on liberty were more the source of federal law than the child of federal law. See Vol. 1:1988, Emerging Issues in State Constitutional Law, A.E. Dick Howard, The Renaissance of State Constitutional Law. The Virginia Bill of Rights, which had great impact, preceded not only the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution, but by one month the Declaration of Independence. In an article in the Kentucky Law Journal, Vol. 80: 1991-92, No. 1, The Kentucky Bill of Rights: A Bicentennial Celebration, by Gormley and Hartman, the authors attribute the source of much of our original Kentucky Bill of Rights to the then recently enacted Pennsylvania counterpart: A comparison of the Kentucky Bill of Rights of 1792 and a number of earlier, now defunct constitutions of the leading colonies, demonstrates unequivocally that the original Kentucky Bill of Rights was borrowed almost verbatim from the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790. The evidence supporting this proposition is carefully documented in the article. Thus, while we respect the decisions of the United States Supreme Court on protection of individual liberty, and on occasion we have deferred to its reasoning, certainly we are not bound to do so, and we should not do so when valid reasons lead to a different conclusion. We are persuaded that we should not do so here for several significant reasons. First, there are both textual and structural differences between the United States Bill of Rights and our own, which suggest a different conclusion from that reached by the United States Supreme Court is more appropriate. More significantly, Kentucky has a rich and compelling tradition of recognizing and protecting individual rights from state intrusion in cases similar in nature, found in the Debates of the Kentucky Constitutional Convention of 1890 and cases from the same era when that Constitution was adopted. The judges recognizing that tradition in their opinions wrote with a direct, firsthand knowledge of the mind set of the constitutional fathers, upholding the right of privacy against the intrusive police power of the state. This tradition is formulated in ringing terms in the opinion of this Court in Commonwealth v. Campbell, 133 Ky. 50, 117 S.W. 383 (1909), but it is also the common thread found in Commonwealth v. Smith, 163 Ky. 227, 173 S.W. 340 (1915), Hershberg v. City of Barbourville, 142 Ky. 60, 133 S.W. 985 (1911), Adams Express Co. v. Commonwealth, 154 Ky. 462, 157 S.W. 908 (1913), and Lewis v. Commonwealth, 197 Ky. 449, 247 S.W. 749 (1923). Leading tort cases grounded on that same right of privacy include Foster-Milburn Co. v. Chinn, 134 Ky. 424, 120 S.W. 364 (1909), Douglas v. Stokes, 149 Ky. 506, 149 S.W. 849 (1912), and Brents v. Morgan, 221 Ky. 765, 299 S.W. 967 (1927). Kentucky cases recognized a legally protected right of privacy based on our own constitution and common law tradition long before the United States Supreme Court first took notice of whether there were any rights of privacy inherent in the Federal Bill of Rights. The first mention of a federal guarantee of the right of privacy is in the Dissenting Opinion of Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438, 478, 48 S.Ct. 564, 572, 72 L.Ed. 944 (1928), in which he defined it as the right to be let alone  the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. Actual recognition by the majority as a working premise came much later in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965). The list of individual rights guaranteed by the Federal Bill of Rights is patently incomplete; ergo the Ninth Amendment stating: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Federal constitutional analysis has proceeded from so-called emanations and penumbras of the First, Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments in the Bill of Rights. These amendments elaborate some of the blessings of liberty referred to in the Preamble to the United States Constitution, but by no means all of them. It is because the United States Supreme Court has recognized that the list is not exclusive, not even for purposes of federal constitutional protection, that it has undertaken, using the Due Process Clauses in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, to create a so-called zone of privacy constitutionally beyond the reach of governmental intrusion. But the United States Supreme Court is extremely reticent in extending the reach of the Due Process Clauses in substantive matters, albeit this is the jurisprudence of this century and not before, following President Franklin D. Roosevelt's court packing efforts in the 1930's. Bowers v. Hardwick, supra , expresses this reticence. The United States Supreme Court, defining the reach of the zone of privacy in terms of federal due process analysis, limits rights of privacy to liberties that are `deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition.' 478 U.S. at 192, 106 S.Ct. at 2844. Sodomy is not one of them. Bowers v. Hardwick decides that rights protected by the Due Process Clauses in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution do not extend a fundamental right to homosexuals to engage in acts of consensual sodomy. See 478 U.S. at 192, 106 S.Ct. at 2844. Bowers decides nothing beyond this. But state constitutional jurisprudence in this area is not limited by the constraints inherent in federal due process analysis. Deviate sexual intercourse conducted in private by consenting adults is not beyond the protections of the guarantees of individual liberty in our Kentucky Constitution simply because proscriptions against that conduct have ancient roots. 478 U.S. at 192. Kentucky constitutional guarantees against government intrusion address substantive rights. The only reference to individual liberties in the Federal Constitution is the statement in the Preamble that one of the purposes in writing in the Constitution is to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Similarly, the Kentucky Constitution has a Preamble: We, the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, grateful to Almighty God for the civil, political and religious liberties we enjoy, and invoking the continuance of these blessings, do ordain and establish this Constitution. But the Kentucky Constitution of 1891 does not limit the broadly stated guarantee of individual liberty to a statement in the Preamble. It amplifies the meaning of this statement of gratitude and purpose with a Bill of Rights in 26 sections, the first of which states: § 1. All men are, by nature, free and equal, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which may be reckoned: First: The right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties. . . . . Third: The right of seeking and pursuing their safety and happiness. . . . . § 2. Absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty and property of freemen exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority. While addressing some of the same considerations as those expressed in the Preamble to the Federal Constitution, none of this textual material appears in the Federal Constitution. Both the record of the 1890-91 debates and the opinions of Justices of this Court who were the contemporaries of our founding fathers express protection of individual liberties significantly greater than the selective list of rights addressed by the Federal Bill of Rights. There was no mention of a right of privacy in these debates only because the concept was not verbalized as such until after the article by Warren and Brandeis, The Right of Privacy, 4 Harv.L.Rev. 193, December 15, 1890, had been publicly disseminated. The ideas Brandeis and Warren expressed in that article as the right of privacy were neither unique to the authors nor confined to the Harvard Law School. They were an expression of contemporary thought. The Commonwealth has stressed that there was no discussion of the right of privacy at the 1890 Kentucky Constitutional Convention, but that is only partly true. The meaning of Sections One and Two as they apply to personal liberty is found in the remarks of J. Proctor Knott of Marion County (see Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates in the 1890 Convention, E. Polk Johnson, Vol. 1, p. 718): [T]hose who exercise that power in organized society with any claim of justice, derive it from the people themselves. That with the whole of such power residing in the people, the people as a body rest under the highest of all moral obligations to protect each individual in the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, provided that he shall in no wise injure his neighbor in so doing.  [Emphasis added.] See also Comments of Delegate J.A. Brents from Clinton County. Debates, Vol. 1, p. 614-18, concluding majorities cannot and ought not exercise arbitrary power over the minority. The leading case on this subject is Commonwealth v. Campbell, supra . At issue was an ordinance that criminalized possession of intoxicating liquor, even for private use. Our Court held that the Bill of Rights in the 1891 Constitution prohibited state action thus intruding upon the inalienable rights possessed by the citizens of Kentucky. Id. 117 S.W. at 385. Our Court interpreted the Kentucky Bill of Rights as defining a right of privacy, even though the constitution did not say so in that terminology: Man in his natural state has the right to do whatever he chooses and has the power to do. When he becomes a member of organized society, under governmental regulation, he surrenders, of necessity, all of his natural right the exercise of which is, or may be, injurious to his fellow citizens. This is the price that he pays for governmental protection, but it is not within the competency of a free government to invade the sanctity of the absolute rights of the citizen any further than the direct protection of society requires.. . . It is not within the competency of government to invade the privacy of a citizen's life and to regulate his conduct in matters in which he alone is concerned, or to prohibit him any liberty the exercise of which will not directly injure society. Id. [Emphasis added.] . . . . . . . let a man therefore be ever so abandoned in his principles, or vicious in his practice, provided he keeps his wickedness to himself, and does not offend against the rules of public decency, he is out of the reach of human laws. Id. at 386. The Court concludes, at p. 387: The theory of our government is to allow the largest liberty to the individual commensurate with the public safety, or, as it has been otherwise expressed, that government is best which governs least. Under our institutions there is no room for that inquisitorial and protective spirit which seeks to regulate the conduct of men in matters in themselves indifferent, and to make them conform to a standard, not of their own choosing, but the choosing of the lawgiver. . . . The right of privacy has been recognized as an integral part of the guarantee of liberty in our 1891 Kentucky Constitution since its inception. The Campbell case is overwhelming affirmation of this proposition: [W]e are of the opinion that it never has been within the competency of the Legislature to so restrict the liberty of this citizen, and certainly not since the adoption of the present [1891] Constitution. The Bill of Rights, which declares that among the inalienable rights possessed by the citizens is that of seeking and pursuing their safety and happiness, and that the absolute and arbitrary power over the lives, liberty, and property of freeman exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest majority, would be but an empty sound if the Legislature could prohibit the citizen the right of owning or drinking liquor, when in so doing he did not offend the laws of decency by being intoxicated in public. . . . Id. at 385. In Adams Exp. Co. v. Kentucky, 238 U.S. 190, 35 S.Ct. 824, 59 L.Ed. 1267 (1915), the United States Supreme Court quotes this language from the Campbell case, and then holds: It therefore follows that, inasmuch as the facts of this case show that the liquor was not to be used in violation of the laws of the state of Kentucky, as such laws are construed by the highest court of that state, the Webb-Kenyon [federal] law has no application and no effect to change the general rule that the states may not regulate commerce wholly interstate. Id. 238 U.S. at 202, 35 S.Ct. at 828, 59 L.Ed. at 1271. At the time Campbell was decided, the use of alcohol was as much an incendiary moral issue as deviate sexual behavior in private between consenting adults is today. Prohibition was the great moral issue of its time. It was addressed both in the 1891 Constitution and in the Nineteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. In 1907, in Board of Trustees of Town of New Castle v. Scott, 125 Ky. 545, 101 S.W. 944 (1907), Chief Justice O'Rear passionately attacked the evil of alcohol in a pro-prohibition ruling interpreting Section 61 of the Kentucky Constitution, which provides for local option elections. He stated: There is yet another view of the subject which we must assume was in the mind of the Convention. The liquor traffic had then [in 1891] come to be regarded as one of the most serious evils of the age, if not the most sinister menace to society that was known. . . . . No other subject had been more clearly settled upon as being within the legitimate exercise of the police power of the state than the regulation of the sale and use of intoxicating liquors. Id. 101 S.W. at 948. Notwithstanding their strong views that drinking was immoral, this same Court with these same judges, including Judge O'Rear, in the Campbell case recognized that private possession and consumption of intoxicating liquor was a liberty interest beyond the reach of the state. Nor is the Campbell case an aberration. Subsequent cases cited and followed Campbell . In Commonwealth v. Smith, 163 Ky. 227, 173 S.W. 340 (1915), citing Campbell , the Court declared a statute unconstitutional that had led to Smith being arrested for drinking beer in the backroom of an office: The power of the state to regulate and control the conduct of a private individual is confined to those cases where his conduct injuriously affects others. With his faults or weaknesses, which he keeps to himself, and which do not operate to the detriment of others, the state as such has no concern. Id., 173 S.W. at 343. The holding in Smith is that the police power may be called into play [only] when it is reasonably necessary to protect the public health, or public morals, or public safety. [Emphasis added.] The clear implication is that immorality in private which does not operate to the detriment of others, is placed beyond the reach of state action by the guarantees of liberty in the Kentucky Constitution. In Hershberg v. City of Barbourville, 142 Ky. 60, 133 S.W. 985 (1911), also citing Campbell , the Court declared an ordinance which purported to regulate cigarette smoking in such broad terms that it could be applied to persons who smoked in the privacy of their own home unreasonably interfere[ed] with the right of the citizen to determine for himself such personal matters. 133 S.W. at 986. In the area of civil law, Kentucky has been in the forefront in recognizing the right of privacy. In 1909, our Court stepped outside traditional libel law and recognized invasion of privacy as a tort in Foster-Milburn Co. v. Chinn, supra . Then in 1927, in Brents v. Morgan, supra , our Court defined this emerging right as the right to be left alone, that is, the right of a person to be free from unwarranted publicity, or the right to live without unwarranted interference by the public about matters with which the public is not necessarily concerned. The right of privacy is incident to the person and not to property. . . . It is considered as a natural and an absolute or pure right springing from the instincts of nature. It is of that class of rights which every human being has in his natural state and which he did not surrender by becoming a member of organized society. The fundamental rights of personal security and personal liberty, include the right of privacy, the right to be left alone. . . . The right to enjoy life [Ky. Const., § 1, first subpart] in the way most agreeable and pleasant, and the right of privacy is nothing more than a right to live in a particular way. Id. at 971, quoting 21 RCL parg. 3, p. 1197. See also Grigsby and Wife v. R.J. Breckinridge, 65 Ky. (2 Bush) 480 (1867) and Douglas v. Stokes, 149 Ky. 506, 149 S.W. 849 (1912), for further confirmation that the right of privacy has long been considered an inalienable right legally protected in this state. In the Campbell case our Court quoted at length from the great work On Liberty of the 19th century English philosopher and economist, John Stuart Mill. We repeat the quote in part: The only part of the conduct of anyone, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. . . . The principle requires liberty of taste and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow; without impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong. 117 S.W. at 386. Mill's premise is that physical force in the form of legal penalties, i.e., criminal sanctions, should not be used as a means to improve the citizen. Id. The majority has no moral right to dictate how everyone else should live. Public indignation, while given due weight, should be subject to the overriding test of rational and critical analysis, drawing the line at harmful consequences to others. Modern legal philosophers who follow Mill temper this test with an enlightened paternalism, permitting the law to intervene to stop self-inflicted harm such as the result of drug taking, or failure to use seat belts or crash helmets, not to enforce majoritarian or conventional morality, but because the victim of such self-inflicted harm becomes a burden on society. See Introduction to Jurisprudence, 4th ed, p. 59 (1979) by Lord Lloyd of Hampstead. Based on the Campbell opinion, and on the Comments of the 1891 Convention Delegates, there is little doubt but that the views of John Stuart Mill, which were then held in high esteem, provided the philosophical underpinnings for the reworking and broadening of protection of individual rights that occurs throughout the 1891 Constitution. We have recognized protection of individual rights greater than the federal floor in a number of cases, most recently: Ingram v. Commonwealth, Ky., 801 S.W.2d 321 (1990), involving protection against double jeopardy and Dean v. Commonwealth, Ky., 777 S.W.2d 900 (1989), involving the right of confrontation. Perhaps the most dramatic recent example of protection of individual rights under the state Constitution where the United States Supreme Court had refused to afford protection under the Federal Constitution, is Rose v. Council for Better Educ., Inc., Ky., 790 S.W.2d 186 (1989). In Rose , our Court recognized our Kentucky Constitution afforded individual school children from property poor districts a fundamental right to an adequate education such as provided in wealthier school districts, even though 16 years earlier the United States Supreme Court held the Federal Constitution provided no such protection in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278, 36 L.Ed.2d 16 (1973). The United States Supreme Court found there was no constitutional, or fundamental, right to a particular quality of education which justified invoking the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Our Court found a duty in the Kentucky constitutional requirement that the General Assembly provide an efficient system of common schools. Ky. Const. Sec. 183. In so doing we stated: We have decided this case solely on the basis of our Kentucky Constitution, Sec. 183. We find it unnecessary to inject any issues raised under the United States Constitution or the United States Bill of Rights in this matter. Rose at 215. In Fannin v. Williams, Ky., 655 S.W.2d 480 (1983), we held unconstitutional a statute that would permit the state librarian to supply textbooks to children in the state's non-public schools, even though in Bd. of Education v. Allen, 392 U.S. 236, 88 S.Ct. 1923, 20 L.Ed.2d 1060 (1968), the United States Supreme Court had held a statute accomplishing a similar purpose did not violate the establishment of religion clause in the United States Constitution. We stated: The problem in this case is not whether the challenged statute passes muster under the federal constitution as interpreted by the United States Supreme Court, but whether it satisfies the much more detailed and explicit proscriptions of the Kentucky Constitution. It does not. 655 S.W.2d at 483. We view the United States Supreme Court decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, supra , as a misdirected application of the theory of original intent. To illustrate: as a theory of majoritarian morality, miscegenation was an offense with ancient roots. It is highly unlikely that protecting the rights of persons of different races to copulate was one of the considerations behind the Fourteenth Amendment. Nevertheless, in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967), the United States Supreme Court recognized that a contemporary, enlightened interpretation of the liberty interest involved in the sexual act made its punishment constitutionally impermissible. According to Bowers v. Hardwick , until 1961, all 50 States outlawed sodomy, and today, 25 States and District of Colombia continue to provide criminal penalties for sodomy performed in private and between consenting adults. 478 U.S. at 193-94, 106 S.Ct. at 2845-46. In the space of three decades half the states decriminalized this conduct, some no doubt in deference to the position taken by the American Law Institute in the Model Penal Code, Sec. 213.2: Section 213.2 of the Model Code makes a fundamental departure from prior law in excepting from criminal sanctions deviate sexual intercourse between consenting adults. American Law Institute, Model Penal Code and Commentaries, Part II, 1980 Ed., pp. 362-63. The usual justification for laws against such conduct is that, even though it does not injure any identifiable victim, it contributes to moral deterioration of society. One need not endorse wholesale repeal of all `victimless' crimes in order to recognize that legislating penal sanctions solely to maintain widely held concepts of morality and aesthetics is a costly enterprise. It sacrifices personal liberty, not because the actor's conduct results in harm to another citizen but only because it is inconsistent with the majoritarian notion of acceptable behavior. In the words of the Wolfenden Report, the decisive factor favoring decriminalization of laws against private homosexual relations between consenting adults is `the importance which society and the law ought to give to individual freedom of choice and action in matters of private morality.' Id. at 371-72. Two states by court decisions hold homosexual sodomy statutes of this nature unconstitutional for reasons similar to those stated here: New York in People v. Onofre, 51 N.Y.2d 476, 434 N.Y.S.2d 947, 415 N.E.2d 936 (1980); and Pennsylvania in Commonwealth v. Bonadio, 490 Pa. 91, 415 A.2d 47 (1980). There are two other states where lower courts have ruled such statutes unconstitutional: Texas v. Morales, 826 S.W.2d 201 (Texas App.  Austin 1992); Michigan Organization for Human Rights v. Kelly, No. 88-815820(CZ) (Wayne County Circuit Court, July 9, 1990). Thus our decision, rather than being the leading edge of change, is but a part of the moving stream. The Bonadio case from Pennsylvania is particularly noteworthy because of the common heritage shared by the Kentucky Bill of Rights of 1792 and the Pennsylvania Bill of Rights of 1790. Decisions of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court interpreting like clauses in the Pennsylvania Constitution are uniquely persuasive in interpreting our own. It is a singular coincidence that in 1980 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reached to the same roots in interpreting its Constitution as our Court did in the Campbell case, quoting at length from the great philosopher, John Stuart Mill, in his imminent and apposite work, On Liberty (1859), and utilizing the same quotes. Id. at 50. The Pennsylvania Court also provides this guidance: With respect to regulation of morals, the policy power should properly be exercised to protect each individual's right to be free from interference in defining and pursuing his own morality but not to enforce a majority morality on persons whose conduct does not harm others. `No harm to the secular interest of the community is involved in atypical sex practice in private between consenting adult partners.' Model Penal Code, Sec. 207.5-Sodomy and Related Offenses. Comment (tent. draft no. 4, 1955). Many issues that are considered to be matters of morals are subject to debate, and no significant state interest justifies legislation of norms simply because a particular belief is followed by a number of people, or even a majority. . . . Enactment of the voluntary deviate sexual intercourse statute, despite that it provides punishment for what many believe to be abhorrent crimes against nature and perceived sins against God, is not proper in the realm of the temporal police power. The Commonwealth has cited State v. Walsh, 713 S.W.2d 508 (Mo.1986), wherein the Missouri Supreme Court rejected a constitutional challenge to a statute similar to ours criminalizing homosexual intercourse. The Missouri court states [t]he issue is whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the state from proscribing homosexual conduct. Id. at 509. No state constitutional law issues were raised in the Walsh case. The Court addressed federal law only and simply followed in lock step the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick . It then undertook an equal protection analysis also based solely on its view of federal equal protection law, again silent as to the Missouri Constitution. We find nothing in the State v. Walsh opinion that provides appropriate guidance for us.