Privacy Rights

The right to be left alone without unwarranted intrusion by government, media, or other institutions or individuals. Although the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution guarantee the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, it was not until the 1965 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Griswold v. Connecticut—which overturned a state law making the sale and use of contraceptives a criminal offense—that a modern privacy doctrine emerged. The extent of the right to privacy and its basis in constitutional law remain contested despite the fact that all recently confirmed U.S. Supreme Court justices have affirmed their belief in that right.

The right to privacy is a relatively new constitutional issue. With the exception of Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)—a court case that voided a state law prohibiting teaching of foreign languages in elementary schools—the major privacy cases have been decided in the last 40 years. These cases concern sexual activity, marital and family rights, abortion, and the right to die. More recently, of course, they involve issues pertaining to national security.

For example, in one of the most controversial decisions in the history of the nation, Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court voided state laws that made most abortions criminal offenses, on the grounds that such laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which some jurists have interpreted as protecting the right to privacy. The right to privacy concerning sexual matters in Griswold was cited as a precedent in the decision in Roe v. Wade.

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that the Fourteenth Amendment included the qualified right to terminate a pregnancy in the first trimester, at the judgment of the woman and her physician. In the second and third trimesters, the states were given some latitude in regulating abortions to protect the life and health of the woman. Despite upholding the woman's right to privacy in having an abortion, the high court gave the states the ability to supersede that right later in the pregnancy, to sustain the state's right to protect health. Thus, the right to privacy in this case is defined but not absolute.

Modern technology has made credit, medical, and other data readily available and extremely marketable commodities, raising new issues and concerns about the individual's right to privacy. The recently created Do Not Call registries are designed to protect the individual's right to privacy from intrusive telemarketers. However, businesses argue that the registries are an unfair limitation on their right to commerce.