Opinion ID: 76904
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The United States Constitution

Text: 22 The United States Constitution does not expressly guarantee a right to privacy, but the Supreme Court has held that a right to privacy does exist within the liberty component of the Fourteenth Amendment. See Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 152-53, 93 S.Ct. 705, 726-27, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973). To date, the Supreme Court has recognized two types of interests protected by the right to privacy. First, the right to privacy guards an individual's interest in avoiding disclosure of certain personal matters. Second, it protects an individual's personal autonomy in making certain important decisions, such as those involving marriage, contraception, and procreation. Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 598-99, 97 S.Ct. 869, 876-77, 51 L.Ed.2d 64 (1977); Carey v. Population Servs. Int'l, 431 U.S. 678, 684, 97 S.Ct. 2010, 2016, 52 L.Ed.2d 675 (1977); Harris, 941 F.2d at 1513 n. 26. 23 Boulineau and Burney argue that our decision in Fortner v. Thomas, 983 F.2d 1024 (11th Cir.1993), establishes that prisoners enjoy a right to bodily privacy that is infringed by the compelled extraction of their saliva. In Fortner, we held that male prisoners' rights to bodily privacy may be violated by allowing female correctional officers to view them in states of nudity. Id. at 1029-30. We explained, [M]ost people have `a special sense of privacy in their genitals, and involuntary exposure of them in the presence of people of the other sex may be especially demeaning and humiliating.' Id. at 1030 (citations omitted). Fortner 's holding thus comports with the Supreme Court's recognition that people have a protected privacy interest in avoiding disclosure of certain personal matters — there, the exposure of their naked bodies. See id. at 1030. We did not consider prisoners' right to privacy against other types of governmental intrusions, and Fortner cannot be read to expand the right to privacy to interests other those involving certain compelled nudity. 24 The statute no doubt requires the disclosure of prisoners' personal DNA information, albeit to a limited audience for limited, law enforcement purposes. However, Boulineau and Burney explicitly limit their privacy challenge to the bodily intrusion caused by the statute: 25 Boulineau and Burney are not trying to hide who they are, or to prevent the state from keeping a record of lawfully obtained DNA samples. Instead, they seek to prevent illegal searches of their persons and to prevent the state from using the fruits of these illegal searches in hypothetical future criminal investigations. 26 Br. of Appellants Paul Boulineau and John Burney at 34. The extraction of saliva itself does not implicate their interests in avoiding disclosure of information, but rather the right of the individual to be free in his private affairs from governmental... intrusion. Whalen, 429 U.S. at 599 n. 24, 97 S.Ct. at 876 n. 24 (citations omitted). Fortner does not address prisoners' bodily privacy in this context. 27 Prisoners do retain certain certain fundamental rights to privacy, and Fortner did not foreclose the possibility that prisoners enjoy other rights to bodily privacy in our circuit. 983 F.2d at 1029-30 (citations omitted). Nonetheless, we conclude that the right Boulineau and Burney claim here is neither fundamental nor implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. See Roe, 410 U.S. at 152, 93 S.Ct. at 726. As we discussed supra section II.A, prisoners routinely undergo drug testing, which requires a bodily intrusion similar to the intrusion here. This and the other restrictions on their freedom which are inherent to their status as prisoners indicate that the right Boulineau and Burney claim here is not protected by the right to privacy. 7