Privacy Rights/History/Country sources/United States
What is the oldest written source in this country that mentions this right?
United States
The United States Constitution does not explicitly grant the right to privacy. The closest one might find in the Constitution is the Fourth Amendment, which protects “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” (The Bill of Rights). Instead, the right to privacy has been inferred by the Supreme Court. In Griswold v. Connecticut, the Court held that the right to privacy is inferred in the Bill of Rights. Justice Douglas wrote the majority opinion and argued that many of the amendments in the Bill of Rights, such as the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination, infers the right to privacy from the state and thus a right that the Constitution protects (Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479). The Supreme Court would uphold the right to privacy in other cases as well. In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the Court extended the ability to purchase contraceptives to unmarried individuals and found that “the constitutionally protected right of privacy inheres in the individual, not the martial couple.” (Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438). In Roe v. Wade, the court determined that the right to privacy, derived from the Fourteenth Amendment, encompasses a woman’s decision on whether to have an abortion (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113). However, this is no longer the case, as Roe v. Wade has since been overturned. In Lawrence v. Texas, the Court again derived the right to privacy from the Fourteenth Amendment and gave the right to privacy to persons of the same sex who choose to engage in sexual conduct. The Court held “The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government.” (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558). The US has multiple acts for the protection of private data. The Privacy Act of 1974 regulates the data that is collected, used, and disseminated by federal agencies; the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act requires financial institutions to protect their consumers data and explain how to the customer; the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) gives data privacy and security for medical information (Murray 2023). Theres are a multitude of different acts that protect the privacy of communications, children, government records and more. In addition to these federal acts, many states are passing or have passed consumer data privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act, which applies to how businesses collect personal information from consumers (Murray 2023). In all, privacy rights in the United States are based off the Courts and legislative acts.
References:
Justia Law. “Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438,” 1972. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/405/438/.
Justia Law. “Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479,” 1965. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/381/479/.
Justia Law. “Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558,” 2003. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/558/.
Justia Law. “Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113,” 1973. https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/410/113/.
Murray, Conor. “U.S. Data Privacy Protection Laws: A Comprehensive Guide.” Forbes, 2023. https://www.forbes.com/sites/conormurray/2023/04/21/us-data-privacy-protection-laws-a-comprehensive-guide/.
National Archives. “The Bill of Rights: A Transcription,” November 4, 2015. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript.