Opinion ID: 1235436
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 18

Heading: Application of the Elements of Invasion of Privacy to This Case

Text: (14) The NCAA challenges the decision of the Court of Appeal upholding a permanent injunction against its drug testing program as a violation of the state constitutional right to privacy. We will therefore review the record, including the findings made by the trial court, in light of the elements of a cause of action for invasion of privacy as we have just discussed them. Plaintiffs correctly assert that the NCAA's drug testing program impacts legally protected privacy interests. First, by monitoring an athlete's urination, the NCAA's program intrudes on a human bodily function that by law and social custom is generally performed in private and without observers. (Cf. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., supra, 489 U.S. 602, 617 [103 L.Ed.2d 639, 659-660]; Pen. Code, § 653n [installation or maintenance of two-way mirror permitting observation of restroom is misdemeanor].) Second, by collecting and testing an athlete's urine and inquiring about his or her ingestion of medications and other substances, the NCAA obtains information about the internal medical state of an athlete's body that is regarded as personal and confidential. ( Board of Medical Quality Assurance v. Gherardini (1979) 93 Cal. App.3d 669, 678 [156 Cal. Rptr. 55] [A person's medical profile is an area of privacy infinitely more intimate, more personal in quality and nature than many areas already judicially recognized and protected.]; see also Wilkinson, supra, 215 Cal. App.3d at p. 1048.) Observation of urination and disclosure of medical information may cause embarrassment to individual athletes. The first implicates autonomy privacy  an interest in freedom from observation in performing a function recognized by social norms as private. The second implicates informational privacy  an interest in limiting disclosure of confidential information about bodily condition. But, as we have noted, the identification of these privacy interests is the beginning, not the end, of the analysis.