Opinion ID: 1873411
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: The 2007 Amendment Created a Privilege

Text: This Court now reverses the Court of Appeals and grants the Cabinet a writ prohibiting any discovery of Baumler's KASPER record. To arrive at this result the Court begins by redefining the issue. Whereas the Court of Appeals saw the 2007 KASPER amendment as conflicting with the discovery rules, this Court notes, correctly, that Kentucky Rule of Civil Procedure (CR) 26, which defines the scope of discovery, expressly excludes from what is potentially discoverable matters that are privileged. The 2007 KASPER amendment precluding discovery of KASPER records created a privilege, the Court holds, and, thus, denying access to those records comports with CR 26. The question becomes not, as the Court of Appeals believed, whether the General Assembly has the authority to rewrite the discovery rules, but rather whether it has the authority to create a privilege exempting KASPER records from the reach of those rules. This reframing of the question, a preliminary matter with which I largely agree, relocates the separation of powers issue but does not solve it. We must now decide whether the purported KASPER privilege impermissibly encroaches upon our authority to make and oversee the rules of evidence, rules which, like the discovery rules, are generally regarded as procedural. Commonwealth v. Alexander, 5 S.W.3d 104, 106 (Ky.1999) (The admissibility of evidence is governed by the Kentucky Rules of Evidence and is procedural in nature.). The majority has decided that the KASPER privilege does not violate the separation of powers for essentially two reasons. First, according to the majority, KRE 501, the general rule regarding privileges, confers upon the General Assembly an unfettered authority to create statutory privileges. [2] Second, and even more radically, the majority concludes that while the rules of evidence may in general be procedural, privileges are different, indeed unique, in that they are matters of substantive law. Privileges, therefore, fall exclusively within the General Assembly's constitutional bailiwick, and the KASPER privilege thus does not implicate separation of powers concerns at all. Needless to say, this latter conclusion turns on its head the traditional understanding in our law, as reflected in our evidence rules and our cases, that privileges are disfavored, that they are at least in significant part procedural, and that courts have authority to oversee them. In the majority's new world order, this tradition is jettisoned and authority to exempt from the duty to provide evidence or testimony is lodged exclusively in the General Assembly, subject only, apparently, to rational basis review. I profoundly disagree with this position. To begin, I should note again that I do agree, although with some reservation, with the majority's refraining of the issue as one concerning the creation of a privilege. The Court of Appeals declined to view the issue that way on the ground that had the General Assembly intended to create a privilege it would have said so expressly. [3] Although the Court of Appeals is correct that courts should be grudgingly slow to read privileges into the law, I nevertheless agree with the majority that the 2007 amendment to the KASPER provision was meant to accord a privilege to KASPER records and reports. The KASPER materials had always been confidential, so the 2007 amendment must have been intended to add something beyond confidentiality. That something was the provision that KASPER data was not to be disclosed when sought for civil discovery or trial, and, as the majority correctly notes, the right to refuse and to prevent disclosure in that context is the essence of a privilege. The KASPER privilege, however, is unlike the lawyer-client, husband-wife, and other testimonial privileges in Article V of our Rules of Evidence, privileges that protect certain confidential communications between parties in special relationships. The only personal relationship remotely at issue in KASPER materials is the physician-patient relationship and the KASPER privilege does not, and clearly was not intended to, foster frank communication between physicians and patients. The KASPER data includes virtually none of what is communicated in that relationship, and the possibility that KASPER data might be subject to discovery is not at all likely to interfere with a physician-patient relationship. As Justice Scott correctly notes in his concurrence, the KASPER privilege is more like privileges other courts have recognized that protect official information. Even here, though, the likeness is quite limited. Like the traditional privileges, the official information privilege is most often applied to protect communications, either deliberative communications between government officials, or, as with the informant's privilege in our KRE 508, communications between the government and third parties. See Mark S. Wallace, Discovery of Government Documents and the Official Information Privilege, 76 Colum. L.Rev. 142 (1976). The KASPER privilege, on the other hand, does not foster internal decision making, nor does it encourage third parties to come forward with information. Indeed, there is no official information at all in the KASPER system which, in essence, is a database of non-privileged information available from other sources albeit no single source. At most, the KASPER privilege protects the privacy of those whose pharmacy records have been collected. This may be a legitimate governmental interest, but it is far from the vital interest that traditionally has been thought to justify the sort of absolute privilege the Cabinet claims and the majority has upheld. See, Developments in the Law  Privileged Communications, Part VI. Institutional Privileges, 98 Harvard L.Rev. 1592, n. 1 (1985). Thus, though I agree with the majority and Justice Scott that the 2007 KASPER amendment was intended to render KASPER records and reports privileged, I do not agree that that conclusion gets us very far, for we must still ask to what extent the privilege can be recognized consistently with the separation of powers, and, if recognized, how it is to be construed. I part company with my colleagues over those significant questions. As stated above, I do not agree that privileges are purely matters of substantive law outside this Court's authority to regulate practice and procedure and I do not agree that the General Assembly's unilateral enactment of this privilege was authorized by our KRE. Moreover, unlike Justice Scott, I do not agree that comity justifies our recognition of an absolute privilege for KASPER reports.