Opinion ID: 159873
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Other circuit authority

Text: 51 As the majority correctly recites, whether a right was clearly established turns not only on whether there is Supreme Court or Tenth Circuit precedent on point, but alternatively, on the weight of authority from other courts. Anaya v. Crossroads Managed Care Sys., Inc., 195 F.3d 584, 594 (10th Cir. 1999). Notwithstanding this, the majority ignores the two cases in the federal courts of appeals with the most substantial factual correspondence to the case at bar, see Harris v. Thigpen, 941 F.2d 1495 (11th Cir. 1991), and United States v. Stine, 675 F.2d 69 (3d Cir. 1982), while concluding that the right was not clearly established because there was no further guidance from the Supreme Court or this circuit, Maj. Op. at 1176. 52 These two cases, like Griffin, start from the premise that an offender retains a constitutional privacy right which must be balanced against the government's legitimate interests to determine whether the probationer's rights are impermissibly impinged. In Thigpen, the Eleventh Circuit evaluated a prison policy which segregated inmates on the basis of their HIV status, thereby necessarily disclosing the inmates' status to other prisoners, prison officials, and visitors. The court recognized the general principle that prisoners retain their constitutional rights, including the right to privacy, so long as they are not inconsistent with inmate status or legitimate penological interests. See 941 F.2d at 1512-13 (citing Turner, 482 U.S. at 84, Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 545 (1979), and Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 5 n.2 (1978)). After balancing the prisoners' privacy interests against the government's asserted interests in segregating HIV-positive inmates from the general prison population to prevent transmission to other inmates and protect prison guards, the court concluded that the HIV segregation policy was reasonable and therefore not a violation of the prisoners' privacy rights. See id. at 1521. 53 Similarly, in Stine, the Third Circuit employed the same analytical framework to uphold a probation condition requiring a probationer to undergo psychological counseling against his challenge that the requirement violated his constitutional right to privacy. In so holding, the court specifically stated that a probation condition which impinges on constitutional rights will be upheld only where the condition of probation is reasonably related to the purposes of probation and the impact on the probationer's privacy rights is no greater than necessary to carry out these purposes. See 675 F.2d at 72. 6 54 A comparison of the legitimate governmental interests in Thigpen and Stine illustrates how devoid Ms. Keenan's actions were of any significant probation interest. The government's interests in segregating the prisoners in Thigpen was to reduce potential transmission of HIV in light of common documented risks existing in a prison environment, which included bloody fights, intravenous-drug use and needle-sharing, tattooing, and unprotected sexual activity. See Thigpen, 941 F.2d at 1516-19. The government's interests in the psychological counseling requirement in Stine was to promote rehabilitation and decrease the likelihood of recidivism. See Stine, 675 F.2d at 71-72. Those important penological and treatment interests justified the intrusions on individual privacy rights at issue in Thigpen and Stine. 7 As discussed above, Ms. Keenan's actions in the present case represent no such interests; her conduct neither assisted in Mr. Herring's rehabilitation nor protected anyone from a foreseeable risk of HIV transmission. 55 In sum, the law was clear in late 1993 that the Constitution provides a privacy right to the non-disclosure of confidential information and that this constitutional right applies to prisoners and probationers and unless limited by a legitimate governmental interest. 8 Because Ms. Keenan lacked any legitimate, probationary interest in disclosing Mr. Herring's HIV status to his family and his employer, her actions violated this clearly established law.