Opinion ID: 1235436
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: The federal constitutional right

Text: The ballot arguments refer to the right to privacy as an important American heritage and essential to the fundamental rights guaranteed by the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, thereby invoking the federal constitutional right to privacy as recognized in decisions of the United States Supreme Court. (Ballot Argument, supra, at p. 27.) The Privacy Initiative was placed before the voters following a two-thirds vote of each house of the Legislature. (Cal. Const., art. XVIII, § 1.) Testimony before the Assembly Constitution Committee, together with staff reports and analyses prepared for that committee and the Senate Constitution Committee, makes explicit reference to the federal constitutional right to privacy, particularly as it developed beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) 381 U.S. 479 [14 L.Ed.2d 510, 85 S.Ct. 1678]. (Kelso, supra, 19 Pepperdine L.Rev. at pp. 468, 473, 475, 477 [reproducing legislative history of Privacy Initiative].) In Griswold, the Supreme Court invalidated a state statute prohibiting the use of contraceptive devices and the giving of medical advice regarding their use. Although the federal Constitution contains no explicit reference to a privacy right, the court found implicit in the Bill of Rights provisions cited in the ballot argument  the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments  zones of privacy emanating from what it called the penumbras of the specific constitutional guarantees. The court located within those zones of privacy personal decisions made by married persons regarding the use of birth control devices. ( Griswold v. Connecticut, supra, 381 U.S. at p. 484 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 514-515].) Concurring justices in Griswold sought to place the interest in marital privacy violated by the anticontraception law on other, less penumbral, constitutional grounds. (381 U.S. 479: `tradition and [collective] conscience of our people' regarding fundamental rights manifested in Due Process Clause and Ninth Amendment ( id., at p. 493 [14 L.Ed.2d at p. 520]) (conc. opn. of Goldberg, J.); basic values `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' in Fourteenth Amendment ( id., at p. 500 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 524-525]) (conc. opn. of Harlan, J.); due process denied because no end of government could support state law at issue ( id., at p. 507 [14 L.Ed.2d at pp. 528-529]) (conc. opn. of White, J.).) The concurring justices' approach has been preferred to the more amorphous penumbral privacy analysis in at least one recent case. ( Cruzan v. Missouri (1990) 497 U.S. 261, 279, fn. 7 [111 L.Ed.2d 224, 242, 110 S.Ct. 2841] [right to refuse medical treatment analyzed as Fourteenth Amendment liberty interest rather than part of right to privacy].) The Supreme Court has included within the post- Griswold implicit right to privacy certain rights of freedom of choice in marital, sexual, and reproductive matters, but has not recognized a general right to engage in sexual activities done in private. (6)(See fn. 8.) (3 Rotunda & Nowak, Treatise on Constitutional Law (2d ed. 1992) § 18.26, p. 298; cf., e.g., Roe v. Wade (1973) 410 U.S. 113 [35 L.Ed.2d 147, 93 S.Ct. 705] and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) 505 U.S. ___ [120 L.Ed.2d 674, 112 S.Ct. 2791] [abortion laws struck down in part and upheld in part]; Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989) 492 U.S. 490 [106 L.Ed.2d 410, 109 S.Ct. 3040] [same] with Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) 478 U.S. 186 [92 L.Ed.2d 140, 106 S.Ct. 2841] [consensual homosexual sodomy law upheld].) [8] (7a) The Fourth Amendment's search and seizure clause is sometimes referred to as a privacy provision. (See, e.g., Treasury Employees v. Von Raab (1989) 489 U.S. 656, 672 [103 L.Ed.2d 685, 706, 109 S.Ct. 1384].) The Fourth Amendment does not proscribe all searches and seizures, but only those that are unreasonable. ( Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn. (1989) 489 U.S. 602, 619 [103 L.Ed.2d 639, 661, 109 S.Ct. 1402].) (8)(See fn. 9.), (7b) Under the Fourth Amendment and the parallel search and seizure clause of the California Constitution (art. I, § 13), the reasonableness of particular searches and seizures is determined by a general balancing test weighing the gravity of the governmental interest or public concern served and the degree to which the [challenged government conduct] advances that concern against the intrusiveness of the interference with individual liberty. ( Ingersoll v. Palmer (1987) 43 Cal.3d 1321, 1338 [241 Cal. Rptr. 42, 743 P.2d 1299].) [9] Collectively, the federal cases sometimes characterized as protecting `privacy' have in fact involved at least two different kinds of interests. One is the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters, and another is the interest in independence in making certain kinds of important decisions. ( Whalen v. Roe (1977) 429 U.S. 589, 598-600 [51 L.Ed.2d 64, 73, 97 S.Ct. 869] [hereafter Whalen ], fns. omitted.) The former interest is informational or data-based; the latter involves issues of personal freedom of action and autonomy in individual encounters with government. The distinction between the two interests is not sharply drawn  disclosure of information, e.g., information about one's financial affairs, may have an impact on personal decisions and relationships between individuals and government. ( Plante v. Gonzalez (5th Cir.1978) 575 F.2d 1119, 1130, cert. den. (1979) 439 U.S. 1129 [59 L.Ed.2d 90, 99 S.Ct. 1047].) The diversity of federal constitutional privacy interests has left the federal right to privacy, especially in its comprehensive penumbral sense, without any coherent legal definition or standard. In privacy cases involving informational interests, the federal courts have generally applied balancing tests that avoid rigid compelling interest or strict scrutiny formulations. (See, e.g., Whalen, supra, 429 U.S. 589 [upholding state statute requiring drug prescriptions to be reported to a state government agency]; Nixon v. Administrator of General Services (1977) 433 U.S. 425, 457-458 [53 L.Ed.2d 867, 899-901, 97 S.Ct. 2777] [sustaining archivists' right of access to presidential papers against individual president's privacy claim]; see also Doe v. Attorney General (9th Cir.1991) 941 F.2d 780, 796 [in informational privacy cases, courts balance the government's interest in having or using the information against the individual's interest in denying access]; Plante v. Gonzalez, supra, 575 F.2d at p. 1134 [public official financial disclosure law case; court applies balancing test, confining strict scrutiny to serious intrusions of specific autonomy rights such as marriage, family, and contraception].) When it is applied, strict scrutiny generally functions as a judicial trump card, invalidating any attempt at state regulation because the state's interest is rarely sufficiently compelling to justify abridgement of the right. (See, e.g., First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978) 435 U.S. 765, 786 [55 L.Ed.2d 707, 724, 98 S.Ct. 1407]; Loving v. Virginia (1967) 388 U.S. 1, 11 [18 L.Ed.2d 1010, 1017-1018, 87 S.Ct. 1817]; Gunther, The Supreme Court, 1971 Term (1972) 86 Harv.L.Rev. 1, 8 [strict scrutiny is `strict' in theory and fatal in fact].) But the Supreme Court has not endorsed strict scrutiny for all privacy-based interests at all conceivable levels of intrusion. Even in specific fields of federal privacy protection, such as abortion rights, the high court has experienced difficulty articulating a consistent standard of review. (Compare, e.g., Roe v. Wade, supra, 410 U.S. at pp. 155-156 [35 L.Ed.2d at pp. 178-179] [reference to compelling state interest] with Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, supra, 505 U.S. at p. ___ [120 L.Ed.2d at pp. 713-715, 742-743, 748-749, 112 S.Ct. at pp. 2820, 2842, 2847] [court unable to arrive at majority position regarding legal standard to measure burdens on abortion rights: three justices favor undue burden standard, one justice strict scrutiny, five justices various other rules and standards].) In summary, outside the separate context of Fourth Amendment searches and seizures, the penumbral federal constitutional right to privacy has been applied to intrusions by the government into a narrow and defined class of personal autonomy interests in contraceptive and reproductive decisions. There is at least some prospect that what have been regarded as privacy interests may henceforth be viewed as Fourteenth Amendment liberty interests in federal constitutional analysis. (See, e.g., Cruzan v. Missouri, supra, 497 U.S. 261.) But whatever predictions one might hazard, the murky character of federal constitutional privacy analysis at this stage teaches that privacy interests and accompanying legal standards are best viewed flexibly and in context. [10]