One thing to keep in mind, however, is that interpretations of the law change. When the Fourth Circuit issued its ruling that there was no privacy protection for information about a person's sexual orientation, the prevailing interpretation of the Constitution was also that nothing in the Constitution protected an individual's right to have sex with a partner of the same sex. That is no longer the case.
{FOOTNOTES}
1 Sterling v. Borough of Minersville, 232 F.3d 190 (3rd Cir. 2000).
2 The ruling was made in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 US 479 (1965), a case that asked whether the government of Connecticut could enforce a state law that prohibited providing access to "any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception."
3 In Griswold the Court said that a married couple had a privacy right to make such a decision, and in Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 US 438 (1972), it said that unmarried couples had a privacy right to do so.
4 Roe v. Wade, 410 US 113 (1973), in which the Court ruled that a woman has a right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.
5 Whalen v. Roe, 429 US 589 (1977).
6 The Second Circuit (covering New York, Connecticut, and Vermont) has ruled that "the excruciatingly private and intimate nature of transsexualism, for persons who wish to preserve privacy in the matter, is really beyond debate" (Powell v. Scrivner, 175 F .3d 107, 111 [1999]). The Sixth Circuit (covering Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee) ruled that "our sexuality and choices about sex . . . are interests of an intimate nature which define significant portions of our personhood. Publicly revealing information regarding these interests exposes an aspect of our lives that we regard as highly personal and private" (Bloch v. Ribar, 156 F.3d 673 [1998]). The Ninth Circuit (covering California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Alaska, and Hawaii) issued a similar ruling in Thorne v. City of El Segundo, 726 F.2d 459 (1980). The Tenth Circuit (covering Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming) ruled that "minors possess a right to informational privacy concerning personal sexual matters," in Eastwood v. Dept. of Corrections, 846 F.2d 627 (1998).
7 Walls v. City of Petersburg, 895 F.2d 188 (4th Cir. 1999).
Reprinted with permission of Beacon Press, (beacon.org) from Out Law: What LGBT Youth Should Know About Their Legal Rights By Lisa Keen. Copyright ©2007 by Lisa Keen.
