Court Opinion

ID: 9624744
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 07:15:48.820118+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:54.129031
License: Public Domain

Utter, J.
(concurring) — I concur with the majority's result but write specially to emphasize the context in which today's decision is made. The language of the majority's ultimate holding — that the ADATSA program does not violate the participants' privacy rights because it does not cause them to "suffer a degrading or embarrassing invasion of intimate aspects of their person" — is proper in this case. See majority, at 512. It does not, however, represent a broad rule characterizing the ambit of the right to privacy generally. If it did, such a rule would go a good deal beyond the cases upon which the majority relies for authority. Rather, the holding in today's case, as the signers of the *518majority would agree, is limited to the specific context from which it arises.
The cases cited by the majority reflect the principle that jurisprudence concerning the right to privacy is intimately tied to the circumstances surrounding each case. The United States Supreme Court in Nixon v. Administrator of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 465, 53 L. Ed. 2d 867, 97 S. Ct. 2777 (1977), stated:
[T]he constitutionality of the [Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation] Act must be viewed in the context of the limited intrusion of the screening process, of appellant's status as a public figure, of his lack of any expectation of privacy in the overwhelming majority of the materials, of the important public interest in preservation of the materials, and of the virtual impossibility of segregating the small quantity of private materials without comprehensive screening. . . .
The Court put in plain terms that "the merit of appellant's claim of invasion of his privacy cannot be considered in the abstract". 433 U.S. at 458. Likewise, our holding is not an abstraction of the law of the right to privacy; it is carefully tailored to the situation presented.
Today's case involves a program offered by the State to indigent people impaired by alcoholism or drug addiction. The State's action here does not amount to a direct intrusion, coercive or otherwise, into the lives of its citizens. Rather, it is an offer to provide food and shelter to those who might otherwise be unable to obtain it. In an institutional residential setting entered into voluntarily, a program participant's expectation of privacy will generally be less than in other forms of residence. While the respondents argue that the program denies them the freedom to choose with whom they are to live, they in fact have made a choice: to live in the institutional environment provided by the ADATSA program.
While government need not subsidize the exercise of a constitutional right, see Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 65 L. Ed. 2d 784, 100 S. Ct. 2671 (1980), it also cannot condition the receipt of benefits on the waiver of such rights. See *519Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 10 L. Ed. 2d 965, 83 S. Ct. 1790 (1963); FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364, 82 L. Ed. 2d 278, 104 S. Ct. 3106 (1984); see also L. Tribe, American Constitutional Law § 11-5 (2d ed. 1988). Therefore, even though the respondents lived in the residential center voluntarily and thus experienced a lessened expectation of privacy, they cannot be compelled to forsake their right to privacy completely. The majority has identified the point at which, in this setting, the respondents' rights would be violated. The ADATSA program does not cross this point; thus there is no violation. Nothing more than this is decided.
Because this case involves solely the interest in and expectation of privacy in a residential program entered into voluntarily, citation to cases such as Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1, 39 L. Ed. 2d 797, 94 S. Ct. 1536 (1974), is unnecessary. To use such cases in contexts other than the ones from which they arose confuses the development of the law of privacy. A close inspection of Belle Terre and of Moore v. East Cleveland, 431 U.S. 494, 52 L. Ed. 2d 531, 97 S. Ct. 1932 (1977), shows that the rules from those cases are confined to the context of zoning law. To apply them to the present case — taking them out of the areas of law in which they were crafted — is to strip them of their limiting principles.
In light of the above concerns, I concur with the majority's opinion insofar as it is limited to the facts of this case.
Brachtenbach and Pearson, JJ., concur with Utter, J.
Reconsideration denied June 26, 1989.