Opinion ID: 859134
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Miners

Text: In addition to the mine operators, the intervening miners also challenge the validity of the document demands on Fourth Amendment grounds, arguing that they have a constitutionally protected privacy interest in their personal medical records and that the regulatory mechanisms used by MSHA violate their Fourth Amendment rights by “attaching legal jeopardy to a refusal to produce confidential records without a prior opportunity for judicial review.” Br. for Petitioners Bickett, et al., at 36. We recognize the gravity of this concern. Medical records can contain some of the most private information about a person. Any scheme that puts those records in the hands of strangers, even a government agency, is a serious matter. Even though the demanded records are limited to those related to injuries and illnesses suffered due to mine work, we recognize that these records could reveal employees’ medical history unrelated to mine work. For example, doctor’s slips may contain information about multiple conditions, including conditions unrelated to mine work, and mine operators may choose to permit MSHA to inspect an entire file of medical records without first having mine personnel sort between relevant and irrelevant records. Courts recognize that private medical records warrant some privacy protection under the Fourth Amendment. See Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 599-604 (1977) (acknowledging Fourth Amendment may protect “zone of pri- vacy,” which includes protection of “the individual Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 35 interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters”); United States v. Westinghouse Elec. Corp., 638 F.2d 570, 577 (3d Cir. 1980) (“[t]here can be no question that an employee’s medical records, which may contain intimate facts of a personal nature, are well within the ambit of materials entitled to privacy protection,” generally basing this entitlement to privacy protection in a “not yet [ ] delineated” constitutional right to privacy as discussed in Whalen, 429 U.S. at 599-600). The extent of the Fourth Amendment’s protection in this area is not clear. In Anderson v. Romero, 72 F.3d 518 (7th Cir. 1995), we traced the history of the “legal concept of privacy” and noted that the “right to conceal one’s medical history is readily derivable from the branch of the tort of invasion of privacy” in the common law, but that “[n]othing in the Fourth Amendment . . . bears directly on the interest in the privacy of one’s medical records.” Id. at 521-22. We found the best indication of such a right in Whalen and the cases that followed it, but noted that Whalen was “very vague” on the possibility of a constitutional right to the privacy of one’s medical records. Id. at 522. (We ultimately held that neither the common law invasion of privacy nor the possible Fourth Amendment right to privacy of medical records could support a cause of action by a state prisoner against a prison officer who revealed to another guard that the prisoner had AIDS). This is not the case in which to sort out this doctrinal ambiguity, as the record demands here do not come close to invading any privacy protection the Fourth 36 Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 Amendment or the common law might offer. Cf. National Aeronautics & Space Admin. v. Nelson, 131 S. Ct. 746, 756-57 (2011) (“as was our approach in Whalen, we will assume for present purposes that the Government’s challenged inquiries implicate a privacy interest of constitutional significance,” holding that, “whatever the scope of this interest,” it did not preclude the government from asking questions about treatment or counseling for illegal drug use on employment background questionnaires otherwise protected from unwarranted disclosure by the Privacy Act), citing Whalen, 429 U.S. at 599, 605. Any possible Fourth Amendment right to the privacy of the miners’ medical records here is limited by the fact that when MSHA sought to inspect and copy the records, they were in the custody of the mines. In holding that a bank customer held no Fourth Amend- ment possessory interest in his bank records that the bank provided to government officials, the Supreme Court noted: This Court has held repeatedly that the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit the obtaining of information revealed to a third party and conveyed by him to Government authorities, even if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the con- fidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed. United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435, 443 (1976) (collecting cases). Our court has similarly applied this principle. In Young v. Murphy, 90 F.3d 1225, 1236 (7th Cir. 1996), we affirmed Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 37 the district court’s finding that qualified immunity protected investigators who inspected a deceased man’s nursing home records, where his estate alleged that the deceased’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the inspection. We found that “no such [Fourth Amendment] right has been clearly established,” and that the estate alleged no facts showing that the deceased held a possessory interest in the inspected records, as “hospital records are typically the property of the hospital rather than a patient.” Id. at 1236. But some personal records are so private that, even when entrusted to another, an individual retains some amount of protection of the privacy of the records in the third party’s custody. In Whalen, the Supreme Court implicitly acknowledged the possibility of a right against compulsory disclosure of a person’s medical records to the government while upholding a New York law that required doctors to file with the state copies of every prescription for drugs deemed to have potential for abuse. 429 U.S. at 599-604. This right is not absolute, however. Whalen indicated that there are circumstances in which the government may obtain access to private personal records in third-party custody: disclosures of private medical information to doctors, to hospital personnel, to insurance companies, and to public health agencies are often an essential part of modern medical practice even when the disclosure may reflect unfavorably on the character of the patient. Requiring such disclosure to representatives of the State having responsibility for the 38 Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 health of the community, does not automatically amount to an impermissible invasion of privacy. 429 U.S. at 602 (emphases added). Whether the government can require banks, medical providers, or employers to turn over private medical records of customers, patients, or employees that are in their possession is a difficult question of balancing. The Third Circuit provided excellent guidance for this balancing in United States v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., in which it considered whether OSHA could require an electric insulator manufacturing company to turn over all of its employees’ medical records to determine the possible health effects of mold used to produce the insulators. 638 F.2d 570 (3d Cir. 1980). The court looked to several factors to balance the government’s interest in public health against the privacy interests of the employees. Those factors included: the type of record requested, the information it does or might contain, the potential for harm in any subsequent nonconsensual disclosure, the injury from disclosure to the relationship in which the record was generated, the adequacy of safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosure, the degree of need for access, and whether there is an express statutory mandate, articulated public policy, or other recognizable public interest militating toward access. Id. at 578. Based on our previous discussions, two of these factors — the need for access and whether there are Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 39 express statutory or regulatory mandates requiring access — weigh in favor of MSHA’s access to the records. Another of these factors — the precautions in place to protect the information from unauthorized disclosure to unintended parties — was emphasized by the Su- preme Court in Whalen and seems especially significant here. In Whalen the Court noted that the government accumulates “vast amounts of personal information” and that the “right to collect and use such data for public purposes is typically accompanied by a concomitant statutory or regulatory duty to avoid unwarranted disclosures.” 429 U.S. at 605. Here, this factor weighs in favor of MSHA’s document demands. The mechanism for collecting information used here is accompanied by both statutory and regulatory duties for MSHA agents to keep the records confidential and avoid unwarranted disclosures. First, like all federal officials handling personal information, MSHA agents are bound by the Privacy Act not to disclose any personal information and to take certain precautions to keep personal information confidential. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b) (“No agency shall disclose any record which is contained in a system of records by any means of communication to any person, or to another agency, except pursuant to a written request by, or with the prior written consent of, the individual to whom the record pertains . . . .”); see also 5 U.S.C. § 552a(c) (outlining accounting precautions agencies must take with regard to personal information); U.S. Dep’t of Navy v. Federal Labor Relations Auth., 975 F.2d 348, 350 (7th 40 Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 Cir. 1992) (reiterating Privacy Act’s requirement that federal officials not disclose personal information without consent). Although there are exceptions to the Privacy Act’s protection against disclosures, none of those exceptions change our determination. Some of the exceptions permit disclosures that would not be unwarranted in this circumstance. For example, exception (1) is for officers of the agency who need the records. Exception (3) is for disclosures for the purpose the information was collected. Exception (5) allows disclosure without any identifying information for purposes of statistical research. Exception (7) allows disclosure to other jurisdictions for law enforcement. And exception (8) allows disclosure in compelling circumstances “affecting the health or safety of an individual.” One exception does not apply in this context: exception (6) for the National Archives, where the record has sufficient historical or other value. 1 See 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). The second exception allows disclosure of records required to be disclosed under the Freedom of Informa- 1 Some of the exceptions would not be relevant for these types of documents: exception (4) for the census bureau, exception (9) for disclosure to Congress, and exception (12) for disclosure to a consumer reporting agency. Finally, one exception would inherently provide sufficient protection of miners’ privacy interests: exception (11) allows disclosure pursuant to the order of a court of competent jurisdiction. 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b). Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 41 tion Act (FOIA). See Pub. L. No. 89-554, 80 Stat. 378, codified at 5 U.S.C. § 552 (FOIA); 5 U.S.C. § 552a(b)(2) (Privacy Act’s second exception). The records demanded here, however, are not subject to disclosure under FOIA. They fall into FOIA’s sixth exemption, for “personnel and medical files and similar files the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(6); see also U.S. Dep’t of Navy, 975 F.2d at 350. The medical records at issue here easily pass both parts of the analysis under FOIA exemption six. First, they are “personnel and medical files and similar files,” and second, the individual privacy concerns the records implicate outweigh FOIA’s purpose of “shed[ding] light on an agency’s performance of its statutory duties.” U.S. Dep’t of Defense v. Federal Labor Relations Auth., 510 U.S. 487, 497 (1994), citing U.S. Dep’t of Justice v. Reporters Committee for BB8 Freedom of Press, 489 U.S. 749, 773 (1989); see also Dep’t of Air Force v. Rose, 425 U.S. 352, 372 (1976) (exemption six “require[s] a balancing of the individual’s right of privacy against the preservation of the basic purpose of the Freedom of Information Act to open agency action to the light of public scrutiny”) (internal quotation marks omitted). The records demanded here are medical records. Absent extraordinary circumstances, it would be a violation of the miners’ privacy if the records were revealed beyond the agency, and revealing individual miners’ medical or personnel information would not advance public transparency of the operations of the Department of Labor or MSHA. See Lakin Law Firm, P.C. v. F.T.C., 352 42 Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 F.3d 1122, 1124 (7th Cir. 2003) (“[P]ersonal identifying information is regularly exempt from disclosure. And that is as it should be, for the core purpose of the FOIA is to expose what the government is doing, not what its private citizens are up to.”); cf. Rose, 425 U.S. at 372 (case summaries of honor and ethics hearings in the military were not within exemption six after personal and other identifying information had been deleted); U.S. Dep’t of Navy, 975 F.2d at 350 (union employees’ names and addresses would fall under FOIA’s exemption six); Consumers’ Checkbook Center for the Study of Services v. U.S. Dep’t of Health and Human Services, 554 F.3d 1046, 1050-56 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (physicians’ Medicare receipts and financial records fall under exemption six). Beyond the protection of the Privacy Act, the Secretary of Labor has adopted specific training and protocols to ensure the confidentiality of personal information. The Secretary implemented rules of conduct that require department employees, managers, contractors, licensees, certificate holders, and grantees to follow a set of rules designed to minimize any accidental disclosure of personal information (for example, not sharing passwords, not uploading, downloading, or transferring files with personal information, and immediately reporting theft). U.S. Dep’t of Labor, Office of Chief Information Officer, Rules of Conduct and the Consequences for Failure to Follow Rules Concerning the Safeguarding of Personally Identifiable Information (April 25, 2011), Joint App. 96. The document lays out consequences for failure to follow the rules and has space Nos. 12-2316 & 12-2460 43 for the employee and supervisor to sign and date upon receipt of the policy and the related training. The miners argue that these rules and protocols are insufficient because the Secretary implemented them after the initial records demands at issue here, but how recently they were adopted is not relevant to our analysis. We are convinced that any private medical or personnel information the Secretary or her agents obtain pursuant to these audits will be adequately protected. Thus, despite the personal nature of the medical records demanded here, we find that the demands do not violate miners’ privacy or Fourth Amendment rights because the government’s need for the records outweighs the miners’ privacy interest in the records, the records are no longer in the miners’ custody, and the Privacy Act and MSHA’s training and protocols adequately protect against unwarranted disclosure by MSHA agents. The warrantless demands for inspection of these records do not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of either the mine operators or the miners.