Opinion ID: 159873
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Clearly established law as it existed in 1993

Text: 41 Ms. Keenan's conduct here occurred in late 1993. By then, as the majority acknowledges, this circuit had clearly recognized that the constitutional right to privacy as defined by Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977), includes an individual's interest in avoiding disclosures of sensitive personal matters. See Flanagan v. Munger, 890 F.2d 1557, 1570 (10th Cir. 1989); Eastwood v. Department of Corrections, 846 F.2d 627, 630-31 (10th Cir. 1988); Mangels v. Pena, 789 F.2d 836, 839 (10th Cir. 1986); Slayton v. Willingham, 726 F.2d 631, 635 (10th Cir. 1984). To ascertain whether Ms. Keenan's conduct violated this clearly established law, I agree with the majority that we must determine to what extent in 1993 this constitutional right applied to a probationer against disclosures by a probation officer. Precedent from the Supreme Court and other circuits establishing the privacy rights of prisoners and probationers guides this undertaking.
42 As the majority acknowledges, in 1987 the Supreme Court in Griffin upheld a probation regulation against a probationer's challenge that it violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The regulation at issue there required probationers to consent to a search of their homes anytime a probation officer had reasonable grounds to believe an offense was being committed. In reaching its conclusion, the Court began its analysis with the statement that probationers do not enjoy 'the absolute liberty to which every citizen is entitled but only . . . conditional liberty,' due to the State's interests in reducing recidivism and ensuring the community is not harmed by the probationer's being at large. Griffin, 483 U.S. at 874 (quoting Morrissey v. Brewer, 408 U.S. 471, 480 (1972)). Significantly, the Court recognized that while these state interests permit[] a degree of impingement upon privacy that would not be constitutional if applied to the public at large[, t]hat permissible degree is not unlimited, . . . . Id. at 875 (emphasis added). Only after recognizing the probationer's general right to privacy did the Court turn to the question of whether this right was overly impinged by the probation regulation, a determination made by balancing the probationer's rights against the governmental interests associated there. Griffin, therefore, clearly established six years prior to the incidents here that probationers retain a right to privacy under the Constitution which is violated where the State impinges upon that right without a legitimate, governmental purpose. 43 The majority here simply relies upon the Court's approval of the regulation in Griffin to conclude that Mr. Herring's privacy right was not clearly established in this case. In so doing, the majority extrapolates from the Court's naked holding without ever acknowledging the underlying analysis and reasoning, and fails entirely to apply that analysis and reasoning to the facts of this case. The majority thus ignores the clear holding in Griffin that a probationer has a constitutional right to privacy which is only limited insofar as the limitation is justified by the 'special need[s]' of the probation system. Id. at 875. See also Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987) (holding that prison regulations impinging on prisoners' constitutional rights are only valid where reasonably related to legitimate penological interests); Doe v. Attorney Gen., 941 F.2d 780, 796 (9th Cir. 1991) (in 1988, law was clear that government may use private information only if it can show that its use of the information advances a legitimate state interest). 44 Although the legitimacy of the governmental interest was crucial to the Griffin analysis, the majority fails to address what interest is at issue here. This flaw proves fatal to its reasoning because, simply put, there was no legitimate governmental interest in Ms. Keenan's conduct. Her unauthorized actions were both erroneous and objectively unreasonable because she acted in violation of both established probation procedures and Colorado state law. 45 In making the disclosures to Mr. Herring's family and employer, Ms. Keenan acted contrary to every written guideline addressing the disclosure of confidential medical information contained in the U.S. Probation Manual, which serves as the authoritative standard for community supervision of federal offenders. Guide to Judiciary Policies and Procedures, vol. X (U.S. Probation Manual) [hereinafter Manual], ch. IV, at 1; see App. 1186. 1 The Manual clearly states the goal of protecting the confidentiality of exposed persons in their HIV status, id., and mandates that [o]fficers should not disclose HIV infection or illness information without the offender's informed written consent, id. at 16; App. at A-2. The Manual further prohibits probation officers from disclosing information to employers without written approval by the officer's supervisor or chief probation officer. Id. at 38; App. at A-7. If the probationer opposes such disclosure, it may not be made without a hearing by the court. Id. Finally, the disclosure can only be with regard to a reasonably foreseeable risk the probationer poses to the employer or the public, and the risk must be related to the offender's past criminal conduct. 2 Id. at 36-37; App. at 1189. 46 Ms. Keenan also violated state criminal law, which prohibits the disclosure of medical information to unauthorized persons. See Colo. Rev. Stat. 18-4-412 (criminalizing the disclosure of medical information to an unauthorized person without prior written authorization); Colo. Rev. Stat. 24-4-1402 (the only authorized disclosures are by medical personnel treating patients and made in the form of reports to the state or local department of public health). In fact, Ms. Keenan's Manual specifically warned her that state civil and criminal penalties could attach to the violation of a probationer's confidentiality surrounding his HIV status, and instructed her to learn the applicable state law. See Manual, ch. IV, at 16, App. at A-2. In addition, Ms. Keenan was required to consult with the probation office's expert on HIV and state confidentiality laws upon learning of Mr. Herring's possible HIV status, a regulation undoubtedly intended to avert the sort of violation which occurred here. See id. at 18; App. 1187, 1188. 47 Despite the statutes and guidelines described above, the government argues that Ms. Keenan disclosed Mr. Herring's purported HIV status to his employer and family to prevent him from breaking Colorado law while on probation, citing Colo. Rev. Stat. 25-4-108. 3 It is clear, however, that Mr. Herring was not violating section 25-4-108, which prohibits a person with a contagious disease from working in the food service industry, because this statute is inapplicable to HIV-positive individuals under Colorado's health code. See Colo. Code Regs. 11CR1, Reg. 6 (only persons prohibited from working in food service pursuant to 25-4-108 are those infected with a disease transmittable through food handling). Morever, reliance on this law was unreasonable because it was antiquated (passed in 1913 and amended once in 1921) and has never been applied in any published case. In fact, the only annotation to this statute contained in Colorado's official reporter cites to an article, published in 1988, describing the inapplicability of the statute in the context of HIV-positive employees. 4 48 The Manual's guidelines, with their reference to state statutes, reflect a reasoned governmental commitment to preserve a probationer's privacy in his confidential medical information. It is significant that in Griffin the Court was called upon to analyze the legitimacy of a governmental interest embodied in an officially established policy. There the Court assessed the probation regulation's constitutionality in light of the probation system's asserted special needs underlying it. See Griffin, 483 U.S. at 875-79. Importantly for our purposes, the Court concluded that the search of a probationer's residence was reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment because it was conducted pursuant to a valid regulation governing probationers, id. at 880 (emphasis added), which was itself justified by the special needs of the probation system making the warrant requirement impractical. 49 Here, however, we are asked to review the independent action of a probation officer which was directly contrary to the published guidelines of the U.S. Probation Office. Ms. Keenan cannot plausibly argue that her random, unauthorized and illegal conduct provides a basis for a legitimate or reasonable governmental interest sufficient to warrant the intrusion on Mr. Herring's privacy rights which occurred here. 5 50 It is true that violation of internal guidelines, or even state laws, does not undermine a qualified immunity defense where the constitutional right was not otherwise clearly established. See Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 194 (1984). Such violations may be considered, however, where they are relevant to the constitutional interest itself. See id. at 193 n.11 (recognizing that laws and regulations may bear upon the existence of a constitutional interest). Ms. Keenan's violation of her own guidelines and state laws serves to point up the fact that her actions served no legitimate probation interest to balance against Mr. Herring's privacy right. Without such an interest, as Griffin makes clear, the impingement on Mr. Herring's right to privacy right is impermissible under the Constitution.
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.