Opinion ID: 1824158
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Heading: employers' jus tertii standing to assert employee rights

Text: Nonetheless, even where a constitutional right to privacy is implicated, that right is a personal one, inuring solely to individuals. Cf. Parnell v. St. Johns County, 603 So.2d 56, 57 (Fla. 5th DCA 1992) (holding that the petitioner had the right not to have her state court cause of action asserting an individual right to privacy claim stayed pending a federal action brought by her employer challenging the same nudity ordinance, observing that the petitioner had raised an important state constitutional issue which pertains to her and not to her employer, because the right to privacy extends only to natural persons). Under traditional jus tertii jurisprudence, In the ordinary course, a litigant must assert his or her own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest a claim to relief on the legal rights or interests of third parties. Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400, 410, 111 S.Ct. 1364, 113 L.Ed.2d 411 (1991). However, the United States Supreme Court has recognized certain limited exceptions to this general rule: We have recognized the right of litigants to bring actions on behalf of third parties, provided three important criteria are satisfied: The litigant must have suffered an injury in fact, thus giving him or her a sufficiently concrete interest in the outcome of the issue in dispute, [ Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 112, 96 S.Ct. 2868, 49 L.Ed.2d 826 (1976)]; the litigant must have a close relation to the third party, id., at 113-114, 96 S.Ct. 2868; and there must exist some hindrance to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests. Id., at 115-116, 96 S.Ct. 2868. See also Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 97 S.Ct. 451, 50 L.Ed.2d 397 (1976). These criteria have been satisfied in cases where we have permitted criminal defendants to challenge their convictions by raising the rights of third parties. See, e.g., Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965); see also McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, 81 S.Ct. 1101, 6 L.Ed.2d 393 (1961). By similar reasoning, we have permitted litigants to raise third-party rights in order to prevent possible future prosecution. See, e.g., Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 93 S.Ct. 739, 35 L.Ed.2d 201 (1973). Powers, 499 U.S. at 410-11, 111 S.Ct. 1364. The injury in fact asserted by the employer here is potential tort liability for disclosure of private information contained in the employees' personnel files. Even in the context of public employment records, this Courtwhile holding that the documents were subject to disclosurehas expressed the opinion that the right of access to public records is not the right to rummage freely through public employees' personal lives. [7] Michel, 464 So.2d at 546. Sterling House has not brought to our attention, nor have we encountered, any case in which the alleged threat of liability or responsibility in a civil action against the party seeking to assert a third-party right has been addressed in determining jus tertii standing. The available decisions address only threats of criminal prosecution and economic sanctions. Cf. Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 97 S.Ct. 451, 50 L.Ed.2d 397 (1976) (holding that a licensed beer vendor, who would be subject to sanctions and the loss of her license for violation of the subject statute, had standing to raise the equal protection claim of a male customer challenging a statutory scheme prohibiting the sale of beer to males under the age of 21); cf. also Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438, 92 S.Ct. 1029, 31 L.Ed.2d 349 (1972) (holding that Baird, who was convicted of giving a young woman a package of Emko vaginal foam at the close of his address to a group of students at Boston University, had standing to raise the equal protection claim of unmarried persons denied access to contraceptives under the challenged statute); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965) (holding that the Executive Director of the Planned Parent-hood League of Connecticut and a licensed physician who had prescribed contraceptives for married persons and been convicted as accessories to the crime of using contraceptives had standing to raise the constitutional rights of their patients). In Craig, the United States Supreme Court explained: [O]ur decisions have settled that limitations on a litigant's assertion of jus tertii are not constitutionally mandated, but rather stem from a salutary rule of self-restraint designed to minimize unwarranted intervention into controversies where the applicable constitutional questions are ill-defined and speculative. See, e.g., Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249, 255, 257, 73 S.Ct. 1031, 97 L.Ed. 1586 (1953); see also Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 123-124, 96 S.Ct. 2868, 49 L.Ed.2d 826 (1976) (Powell, J., dissenting). These prudential objectives, thought to be enhanced by restrictions on third-party standing, cannot be furthered here, where the lower court already has entertained the relevant constitutional challenge and the parties have soughtor at least have never resistedan authoritative constitutional determination. In such circumstances, a decision by us to forgo consideration of the constitutional merits in order to await the initiation of a new challenge to the statute by injured third parties would be impermissibly to foster repetitive and time-consuming litigation under the guise of caution and prudence. Moreover, insofar as the applicable constitutional questions have been and continue to be presented vigorously and cogently, Holden v. Hardy, 169 U.S. 366, 397, 18 S.Ct. 383, 42 L.Ed. 780 (1898), the denial of jus tertii standing in deference to a direct class suit can serve no functional purpose. Our Brother Blackmun's comment is pertinent: [I]t may be that a class could be assembled, whose fluid membership always included some [males] with live claims. But if the assertion of the right is to be `representative' to such an extent anyway, there seems little loss in terms of effective advocacy from allowing its assertion by the present jus tertii champion. Singleton v. Wulff, supra, at 117-118, 96 S.Ct. 2868. 429 U.S. at 193-94, 97 S.Ct. 451. Applying this reasoning, it is at least questionable whether Sterling House's expressed concern satisfies the injury in fact prong of the three-part standing test. If, however, it does, then we must next determine whether the litigant seeking to assert the right in this case has a close relation to the third party. [8] The First District in Douglas held that a mere employee/employer relationship is not the kind of special relationship necessary for third-party standing. 454 So.2d at 760. The Fifth District in Deutsch expressly disagreed. 765 So.2d at 784. In so doing, however, it focused on the character of the contents of the personnel file and its relevance to the litigation in which disclosure was sought, rather than on the employer-employee relationship: In Rosado v. Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., 1994 WL 700344 (Conn.Super.Ct.1994), a plaintiff alleged that he was sexually assaulted by the defendant Pcolka while Pcolka was a priest employed by the defendant Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocese. The court noted that while the rules of civil discovery are liberally construed, that policy is qualified where the object of discovery is a personnel file: The disclosure of such information must be carefully tailored to a legitimate and demonstrated need for such information in any given case. Where disclosure of the personnel file would place in the hands of a [party] irrelevant or personal and sensitive information concerning ... [another], the entire file should not be disclosed. No ... [party] has the right to conduct a general fishing expedition into the personnel records of a[nother]. Any request for information that does not directly relate to legitimate issues that may arise in the course of the ... [trial] ought to be denied. In recognizing the danger of permitting the disclosure of personnel records of any witness or litigant, one court has said: It has been widely noted that such records often contain raw data, uncorroborated complaints, and other information which may or may not be true but may be embarrassing, although entirely irrelevant to any issue in the case, even as to credibility. People v. Sumpter, 75 Misc.2d 55, 60, 347 N.Y.S.2d 670 (1973). Deutsch, 765 So.2d at 783-84; cf. also Alterra Health Care Corp., 779 So.2d at 636 n. 1 (Wolf, J., specially concurring) (In addition, Alterra and its employees have a substantial relationship and consistent interests which favor the granting of third party standing.). The last prong to consider is whether there is some hindrance to the third party's ability to protect his or her own interests. While Judge Wolf, in his specially concurring opinion in Alterra Health Care Corp., opined that there was, [9] the court in Douglas observed that the nurse employees had, in fact, moved to intervene in the litigation, lending credence to the conclusion that, at least in that case, there was no hindrance. See Douglas, 454 So.2d at 761 (Also, the nurses have moved to intervene. If they are allowed to intervene, they can assert their own rights.); cf. also Rosado v. Bridgeport Roman Catholic Diocesan Corp., 60 Conn.App. 134, 758 A.2d 916 (2000) (allowing non-party priests to intervene in the litigation to protest production of their personnel records on the alleged grounds that the records are protected from disclosure by the United States Constitution, the state constitution, state statutes, and the common law). On balance, we conclude that application of the three-part jus tertii analysis militates against recognizing third-party standing for nonpublic employers involved in requests for production of personnel records to assert their employees' privacy rights in those records. This does not necessarily mean, however, that such important nonparty rights should not be considered, or that the right to privacy and the right to know should not be weighed, during the discovery process.