Court Opinion

ID: 9606799
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 02:52:41.780173+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:06:44.864086
License: Public Domain

WARREN, J.,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority that there was no violation of ORS 132.580 and no need to impose sanctions under that statute. Nevertheless, because I disagree with its conclusion that medical records do not come within the protection of Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution, I dissent.
Under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution:
“A search or seizure to obtain evidence of a crime is unconstitutional if no warrant authorized the search or seizure and there is no exigency that would obviate the need for a warrant.” State v. Campbell, 306 Or 157, 162, 759 P2d 1040 (1988).
The state obtained defendant’s medical records without a warrant, and no exigency obviated the need for one. Accordingly, if obtaining those records was a search or seizure, defendant’s motion to suppress should have been allowed.
A search occurs when the challenged government conduct, “if engaged in wholly at the discretion of the government, will significantly impair ‘the people’s’ freedom from scrutiny * * 306 Or at 171. Defendant challenges the state’s unimpeded access to his medical records. Therefore, the question is whether the state’s unfettered access to an individual’s medical records significantly impairs “the people’s” freedom from scrutiny.
The form of scrutiny that the people are to be free from is determined, in part, “by social and legal norms of behavior, such as trespass laws and conventions against eavesdropping.” 306 Or at 170. The Oregon legislature has established, as a matter of public policy, that medical records are private. ORS 192.525 provides:
“The Legislative Assembly declares that it is the policy of the State of Oregon to protect both the right of an individual to have the medical history of the individual protected from disclosure to persons other than the health care provider and insurer of the individual who needs such information, and *262the right of an individual to review the medical records of that individual.”1
Save for a specific guarantee in the Constitution, there could be no stronger expression of the right to be free from a particular form of scrutiny than a legislative enactment declaring that freedom to be the public policy of the state. Accordingly, the majority misses the target by declaring that individuals have no privacy interest in their medical records.
The cases stress that individuals can have a privacy interest in those things that they expose to public view. In State v. Wacker, 111 Or App 483, 488, 826 P2d 1019, rev allowed 314 Or 573 (1992), we held that the state could not use a nightscope to intrude into the privacy of a car parked in a lot accessible to the public, because “what a person seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected.” See State v. Owczarzak, 94 Or App 500, 766 P2d 399 (1988). Those cases make clear that exposing private information to one person does not mean that a privacy interest in that information vis-a-vis the state is forfeited. The dividing line between a protected privacy interest and no privacy interest is not based on whether someone could or did obtain the same information that the state seeks to obtain. Rather, the question is whether the government’s conduct in obtaining that information significantly impairs “the people’s” freedom from scrutiny. Allowing the government unfettered access to medical records crosses that line.
There is an additional danger lurking in the majority’s opinion. Its rationale could be applied to support the warrantless seizure of numerous types of private records. Records kept by accountants, lawyers, stock brokers, psychotherapists, ministers or bankers would no longer be free from unfettered governmental scrutiny, unless the legislature enacts specific protections for those records. See, e.g., ORS 192.570. That is not how Article I, section 9, is supposed to work.
*263Because the state seized defendant’s medical records without a warrant, the court erred in denying his motion to suppress.
I dissent.

 OEC 504-1 also expresses the policy of this state in protecting the privacy of n iical records by creating a physician-patient privilege. That privilege extends to c; 1 proceedings, where constitutional protections might not otherwise apply b ause of the lack of state action.