Opinion ID: 720576
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Federal Constitutional Claim

Text: 7 There is no violation of the United States Constitution in this case because there is no constitutional right to privacy in one's criminal record. Nondisclosure of one's criminal record is not one of those personal rights that is fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. See Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 97 S.Ct. 869, 51 L.Ed.2d 64 (1977). In Whalen, the Supreme Court distinguished fundamental privacy interests in matters relating to marriage, procreation, contraception, family relationships, and child rearing and education and individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters, see id. at 599, 97 S.Ct. at 876, finding no general constitutional right to nondisclosure of private data, see id. at 608-09, 97 S.Ct. at 881 (Stewart, J., concurring). 8 Moreover, one's criminal history is arguably not a private personal matter at all, since arrest and conviction information are matters of public record. See Paul v. Davis, 424 U.S. 693, 96 S.Ct. 1155, 47 L.Ed.2d 405 (1976) (rejecting a similar claim based on facts more egregious than those alleged here); see also J.P. v. DeSanti, 653 F.2d 1080 (6th Cir.1981) (interpreting Paul in light of subsequent Supreme Court cases (Whalen and Nixon v. Administrator, 433 U.S. 425, 97 S.Ct. 2777, 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977)) and holding that there is no general right to a constitutional balancing of government action against individual privacy absent personal rights that are fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty). Although there may be a dispute among the circuit courts regarding the existence and extent of an individual privacy right to nondisclosure of personal matters, see Slayton v. Willingham, 726 F.2d 631 (10th Cir.1984); Fadjo v. Coon, 633 F.2d 1172, 1176 (5th Cir. Unit B 1981) (both opining that Paul has been at least partially overruled by the Supreme Court's decisions in Whalen and Nixon ), this circuit does not recognize a constitutional privacy interest in avoiding disclosure of, e.g., one's criminal record. See DeSanti, 653 F.2d at 1090 (regarding disclosure of juvenile delinquents' social histories); see also Doe v. Wigginton, 21 F.3d 733 (6th Cir.1994) (disclosure of inmate's HIV infection did not violate constitutional right of privacy). 9 Because there is no privacy interest in one's criminal record that is protected by the United States Constitution, Cline could prove no set of facts that would entitle him to relief; therefore, the district court correctly dismissed this claim.