Court Opinion

ID: 9483370
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:18:48.805192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:35.498829
License: Public Domain

WIDENER, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I concur in the result and in much of Judge Hall’s opinion.
I do not agree, however, with certain parts of that opinion, none of which are necessary to the result obtained. These parts follow.
On page 487 in Part IIIA of the opinion, I do not accept the contention that the Red Cross has standing to raise the donor’s constitutional rights. That one man may not raise the constitutional rights of another is well settled, e.g., Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 499, 95 S.Ct. 2197, 2205, 45 L.Ed.2d 348 (1975). Neither reason nor precedent requires a departure here, and it is at once apparent that the Red Cross has standing to take positions in litigation which it conceives would protect its blood supply, out of which protection these peripheral questions have arisen. Indeed, the question of the standing of the Red Cross has not been raised in the briefs.
Especially in the first paragraph of Part III of the opinion, and perhaps elsewhere, the opinion may be read that a blood donor or seller of blood has some kind of a constitutionally or otherwise protected privacy right which must be outweighed by the interest of the plaintiff in obtaining the information. I do not agree with any such implication.
I do not believe that a donor or seller of blood who has AIDS or any like disease which may be communicated by his blood, has any kind of a privacy right, constitutional or otherwise, which would protect him against the full disclosure of his knowledge with respect to the disease in himself and others, as well as his physical condition and everything about the taking and handling of his blood. I believe that such a donor or seller of blood has no right of privacy with respect to a disease that his blood transmits to another. To hold otherwise would only lend constitutional or other like protection to a corruption of our national blood supply. The confinement by the district court of the knowledge sought by discovery to those needing to know, under FRCP 26, is at least as much protection, if any, the donor or seller is entitled to, and the extent or existence of any such protection is a question we do not have to, and do not, decide.