Whalen v. Roe, A-368

• Citation: 423 U.S. 1313,96 S.Ct. 164,46 L.Ed.2d 18
• Decision Date: 28 October 1975
• Docket Number: No. A-368,A-368
• Parties: Robert P. WHALEN, Commissioner of Health of New York, Appellant, v. Richard ROE, an infant by Robert Roe, his parent, et al
• Court: United States Supreme Court

423 U.S. 1313

96 S.Ct. 164

46 L.Ed.2d 18

Robert P. WHALEN, Commissioner of Health of New York, Appellant,

v Richard ROE, an infant by Robert Roe, his parent, et al.

No. A-368.

Oct. 28, 1975.

Mr. Justice MARSHALL, Circuit Justice.

This is an application for a stay of the judgment of a three-judge court sitting in the Southern District of New York. The applicant, the Commissioner of Health of the State of New York, has been enjoined by the three-judge court from enforcing certain provisions of New York's Public Health Law (Law). Respondents are various physicians, organizations of physicians, and patients in the State of New York who successfully brought suit to have those provisions declared unconstitutional.

The provisions at stake are those parts of §§ 3331(6), 3332(2)(a), and 3334(4) of the Law (Supp.1974) that require the name and address of each patient receiving a Schedule II controlled substance to be reported to the applicant. Schedule II drugs are those that have a high potential for abuse, but also have an accepted medical use. They include opiates and amphetamines. Under the Law, a doctor prescribing a Schedule II drug does so on a special serially numbered triplicate prescription form. One copy is retained by the doctor, a second goes to the pharmacist (if applicable), and the last copy goes to the applicant, who transfers the data, including the name and address of the patient, from the prescription to a centralized computer file.

Respondents brought this action shortly after the effective date of the computerization program, alleging violations of their constitutional rights under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and grounding jurisdiction on 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3). Specifically, respondents claimed that mandatory disclosure of the name of a patient receiving Schedule II drugs violated the patient's right of privacy and interfered with the doctor's right to prescribe treatment for his patient solely on the basis of medical considerations. A three-judge court was convened. Roe v. Ingraham, 480 F.2d 102 (CA2 1973).

At trial, various respondents testified that they were inhibited from using or prescribing Schedule II drugs they otherwise found beneficial because of a reluctance to disclose their or their patients' identities to the State. While questioning respondents' standing to sue, the applicant asserted that knowledge of patients' names was necessary to enable the computer system to detect drug abuse. When put to its proof by respondents, however, the applicant eventually conceded that the names and addresses of patients were useful in detecting only one abuse: patients who go from doctor to doctor (using the same name on each visit) in order to obtain an excessive supply of drugs. Thereupon respondents showed that in 15 months of operation the computer system had located only one suspected "doctor-shopper" while processing over 125,000 prescriptions per month. Thus respondents contended that the centralization of patients' names and addresses served no compelling state interest sufficient to offset the asserted invasion of privacy.

The three-judge court accepted respondents' arguments. The court read our decisions in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S.Ct. 705, 35 L.Ed.2d 147 (1973), and Doe v. Bolton, 410 U.S. 179, 93 S.Ct. 739, 35 L.Ed.2d 201 (1973), as placing the doctor-patient relationship among those zones of privacy accorded constitutional protection. While noting that Roe and Doe concerned the most intimate of personal relations, sexual intimacy and the decision to bear a child, the court refused to hold the doctor-patient relationship constitutionally protected only when matters of childbearing were at stake. Rather, it noted the intimate nature of a patient's concern about his bodily ills and the medication he takes, and held that these matters, too, are protected by the constitutional right to privacy. While reaching this conclusion primarily on the basis of Roe and Doe, the court drew some support from the concurring and dissenting opinions in California Bankers Ass'n v. Shultz, 416 U.S. 21, 78, 94 S.Ct. 1494, 1525, 39 L.Ed.2d 812 (1974) (Powell, J., concurring); id., at 79, 94 S.Ct., at 1526 (Douglas, J., dissenting); id., at 91, 94 S.Ct., at 1532 (Brennan, J., dissenting); id., at 93, 94 S.Ct., at 1533 (Marshall, J., dissenting); 93, 94 S.Ct. 1494, 1525, 1526, 1532, 1533, 39 L.Ed.2d 812 (1974), which it read as indicating that a majority of this Court would accord constitutional protection, at least against a wholesale reporting requirement, to all "intimate areas of an individual's personal affairs." Id., at 78, 94 S.Ct., at 1526 (Powell, J., concurring). Upon finding that respondents had a protected privacy interest in the medication they received, the court balanced that interest against the State's need for patients' names, and concluded that, with one suspect uncovered over 15 months, the need shown was ephemeral. "The diminution of a constitutionally guaranteed freedom is too great a price to pay for such a small governmental yield." Roe v. Ingraham, 403 F.Supp. 931, at 937 (SDNY 1975) (footnote omitted).

Finding those portions of the Law that demanded disclosure of patients' names and addresses to the State to be unconstitutional on the facts, the court enjoined the State from enforcing those provisions and from accepting for filing prescriptions or other documents disclosing...