The Oyez Project: Privacy Issues - Miscellaneous Decisions

Board of Education v. Earls

Is the Student Activities Drug Testing Policy, which requires all students who participate in competitive extracurricular activities to submit to drug testing, consistent with the Fourth Amendment?

Yes. In a 5-4 opinion delivered by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court held that, because the policy reasonably serves the School District's important interest in detecting and preventing drug use among its students, it is constitutional. The Court reasoned that the Board of Education's general regulation of extracurricular activities diminished the expectation of privacy among students and that the Board's method of obtaining urine samples and maintaining test results was minimally intrusive on the students' limited privacy interest. "Within the limits of the Fourth Amendment, local school boards must assess the desirability of drug testing schoolchildren. In upholding the constitutionality of the Policy, we express no opinion as to its wisdom. Rather, we hold only that Tecumseh's Policy is a reasonable means of furthering the School District's important interest in preventing and deterring drug use among its schoolchildren," wrote Justice Thomas.

Bowers v. Hardwick

Does the Constitution confer a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in consensual sodomy, thereby invalidating the laws of many states which make such conduct illegal?

No. The divided Court found that there was no constitutional protection for acts of sodomy, and that states could outlaw those practices. Justice Byron White argued that the Court has acted to protect rights not easily identifiable in the Constitution only when those rights are "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty" (Palko v. Connecticut, 1937) or when they are "deeply rooted in the Nation's history and tradition" (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965). The Court held that the right to commit sodomy did not meet either of these standards. White feared that guaranteeing a right to sodomy would be the product of "judge-made constitutional law" and send the Court down the road of illegitimacy.

Chandler v. Miller

Did Georgia's drug testing statute violate the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against illegal search and seizures?

Yes. In an 8-to-1 opinion, the Court noted that while the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits officials from conducting search and seizures without individualized suspicion, there does exist a narrowly defined category of permissible suspicionless searches and seizures. The Court held, however, that Georgia's statute did not fall in this exceptional category, since it failed to show why its desire to avoid drug users in its high political offices should outweigh candidates' privacy interests. In addition to Georgia's failure to provide evidence of a drug problem among its state officials, the Court concluded that even if such a problem did exist, the affected officials would most likely not perform the kind of high-risk, safety sensitive tasks, which might justify the statute's proposed incursion on their individual privacy rights.

Doe v. Chao

Does the federal Privacy Act require that people prove they suffered "actual damage" stemming from the government's violation of their privacy rights in order to win damages in a suit against the government?

Yes. Justice David Hackett Souter delivered the Court's 6-3 opinion that the Privacy Act requires plaintiffs prove actual damages to qualify for the minimum statutory award of $1000. The Court reasoned that "a straightforward textual analysis" of the Privacy Act shows that the statute guarantees the $1000 minimum for victims of willful Privacy Act violations only in relation to "actual damages sustained." Individuals subjected to an adverse effect - like the miners in this case - have "injury enough to open the courthouse door, but without more" have "no cause of action for damages under the Privacy Act."

Gonzaga University v. Doe

May a student sue a private university for damages to enforce provisions of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974?

No. In a 7-2 opinion delivered by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the Court held that such an action is foreclosed because the relevant provisions of FERPA create no personal rights to enforce. The Court reasoned that the creation of individual rights required clear and unambiguous terms, which FERPA's confidentiality provisions did not contain. "FERPA's nondisclosure provisions contain no rights-creating language, they have an aggregate, not individual, focus, and they serve primarily to direct the Secretary of Education's distribution of public funds to educational institutions," wrote Chief Justice Rehnquist. Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, dissented, arguing that the Court's opinion "may be read as accepting the proposition that FERPA does indeed create both parental rights of access to student records and student rights of privacy in such records, but that those federal rights are of a lesser value because Congress did not intend them to be enforceable by their owners."

Lawrence and Garner v. Texas

Do the criminal convictions of John Lawrence and Tyron Garner under the Texas "Homosexual Conduct" law, which criminalizes sexual intimacy by same-sex couples, but not identical behavior by different-sex couples, violate the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of laws? Do their criminal convictions for adult consensual sexual intimacy in the home violate their vital interests in liberty and privacy protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? Should Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), be overruled?

No, yes, and yes. In a 6-3 opinion delivered by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court held that the Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct violates the Due Process Clause. After explaining what it deemed the doubtful and overstated premises of Bowers, the Court reasoned that the case turned on whether Lawrence and Garner were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause. "Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government," wrote Justice Kennedy. "The Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual," continued Justice Kennedy. Accordingly, the Court overruled Bowers. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, with whom Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Thomas joined, filed dissents.

Nixon v. Warner Communications, Inc.

No details yet.

Owasso Independent School Dist. No. I011 v. Falvo

Does the practice of peer grading violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974?

No. In a unanimous opinion delivered by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, the Court held that Peer grading does not violate FERPA. The Court reasoned that peer-graded items did not constitute education records protected by FERPA until a teacher collected the grades on the students' papers or other items and recorded the grades in the teacher's grade book. In reaching its conclusion, the Court noted that peer-graded items were not "maintained" within in the meaning of FERPA, as the student graders only handled the items for a few moments. Moreover, the Court stated that each student grader, by grading assignments, did not constitute a person acting for an educational institution within FERPA.

Troxel v. Granville

Does the Washington statute, which allows any person to petition for a court-ordered right to see a child over a custodial parent's objection if such visitation is found to be in the child's best interest, unconstitutionally interfere with the fundamental right of parents to rear their children?

Yes. In a 6-3 decision delivered by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the Court held that the Washington Statute violated the right of parents, under the due process clause of the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment, to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children. Justice O'Connor wrote for the Court that "[t]he liberty interest at issue in this case -- the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children -- is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court." Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy dissented.

Vernonia School District v. Acton

Does random drug testing of high school athletes violate the reasonable search and seizure clause of the Fourth Amendment?

No. The reasonableness of a search is judged by "balancing the intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against the promotion of legitimate governmental interests." In the case of high school athletes who are under State supervision during school hours, they are subject to greater control than over free adults. The privacy interests compromised by urine samples are negligible since the conditions of collection are similar to public restrooms, and the results are viewed only by limited authorities. Furthermore, the governmental concern over the safety of minors under their supervision overrides the minimal, if any, intrusion in student-athletes' privacy.

Whalen v. Roe

Did the reporting and record-keeping requirements violate the constitutional right to privacy embraced by the concept of liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment?

The Court held that the requirements of the Act did not on its face violate a "constitutionally protected 'zone of privacy.'" The Court found that the statutory scheme evidenced "a proper concern with, and protection of, the individual's interest in privacy" and that the "remote possibility" of potential abuses of data accumulation and disclosure were not sufficient to establish an invasion of any rights or liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.