finding that plaintiff's right to not have information from psychiatric report disseminated to the press was not "clearly established" by relevant caselaw
How later courts described this case
- finding that plaintiff's right to not have information from psychiatric report disseminated to the press was not "clearly established" by relevant caselaw
- finding that facts of decided cases do not provide sufficient guidance such that reasonable person would know that what was done violated the law
- recognizing conflict among circuits on privacy right violation implicated by disclosure of information and holding no clearly established claim for disclosure of psychiatric report
- discussing “confidentiality” and “autonomy” aspects of federal constitutional right to privacy: “the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters” and “the interest in independence in malting certain kinds of important decisions”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Notwithstanding the majority’s well-crafted opinion, I am forced to dissent because I believe that in June of 1983 it was clearly established that the disclosure by a reasonable district attorney “to the news media [of] the intimate details of an individual’s [court ordered] psychiatric report, particularly once the decision [had] been made not to prosecute,” 22 was a violation of that individual’s constitutionally protected right of privacy. Nixon v. Administrator of General Services, 433 U.S. 425, 457 , 97 S.Ct. 2777 , 53 L.Ed.2d 867 (1977) (The right to privacy encompasses “ ‘the individuales] interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters’”); Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 599 , 97 S.Ct. 869, 876 , 51 L.Ed.2d 64 (1977) (same); Fadjo v. Coon, 633 F.2d 1172, 1175 (5th Cir.1981) (Action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 based on revealing the contents of state insurance investigation “[c]learly states a claim under the confidentiality branch of the privacy right”). United States v. Westinghouse Electric Corp., 638 F.2d 570, 577 (3d Cir.1980) (“There can be no question that an employee’s medical records, which may contain intimate facts of a personal nature, are well within the ambit of materials entitled to privacy protection”). See also Duplantier v. United States, 606 F.2d 654 (5th Cir.1979); Plante v. González, 575 F.2d 1119 (5th Cir.1978).
I find it difficult to accept under the circumstances of .this case, that an exact factual precedent is necessary to alert a person in appellant’s position to the fact that the gratuitous, and, at that point, totally unnecessary, disclosure of appellee’s psychiatric report, would violate appellee’s right to privacy. I can think of few matters containing information more intimate to an individual than that in his or her psychiatric report. Nor can there be many positions mandating the exercise of higher public relations restraint than that imposed on a court officer with respect to a judicially-imposed procedure such as the one in question. Such a situation would cause any reasonable person, not only one versed in the intricacies of the law, to hesitate before acting.
To conclude that under such a setting appellant was not violating clearly established law is in my opinion contrary to both Supreme Court and First Circuit precedent. In Hall v. Ochs, 817 F.2d 920 , (1st Cir.1987), in discussing what was meant by “clearly established law” we held that:
In making this determination, we need not find a ruling that considered the precise situation at hand. It is enough, *850 rather, that there existed case law sufficient to clearly establish that, if a court were presented with such a situation, the court would find that plaintiffs’ rights were violated. See King v. Higgins, 702 F.2d 18, 20 (1st Cir.1983).
At 924 (emphasis in original). In Vázquez Ríos v. Hernández Colón, 819 F.2d 319 , (1st Cir., 1987), we followed similar reasoning in ruling upon “[t]he basic principles” applicable to politically-motivated discharges subject to scrutiny under Elrod v. Burns, 427 U.S. 347 , 96 S.Ct. 2673 , 49 L.Ed.2d 547 (1976) and Branti v. Finkel, 445 U.S. 507 , 100 S.Ct. 1287 , 63 L.Ed.2d 574 (1980).
In Anderson v. Creighton, — U.S.-, 107 S.Ct. 3034 , 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987), the Court recently supported our reasoning in Hall and Vázquez Rios. In particularizing the meaning of the term “clearly established” law, the Court found:
The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, but is to say that in the light of preexisting law the unlawfulness must be apparent.
In the light of the preexisting law as of June of 1983, it should have been clearly apparent to appellant that his unwarranted disclosure of the contents of appellee’s court ordered psychiatrict report, was an invasion of appellee’s constitutional right to privacy.
I therefore dissent.
. Robert A. Borucki v. W. Michael Ryan, et al., 658 F.Supp. 325 , (1986), At 331 (emphasis in original).