Minors' Constitutional Right to Informational Privacy

Abstract

The contours of the constitutional right to privacy have eluded courts since the Supreme Court first announced this distinct right in Griswold v Connecticut.' Likely in a failed attempt to clear up this doctrine, the Court in Whalen v Roe2 declared that the right to privacy encompasses two separate interests: security of personal information and autonomy in making important decisions.3 While the Supreme Court has revisited the second strand-often deemed "decisional privacy"-many times since Whalen, it has reexamined the first strand, "informational privacy," only once, and in the same year it decided Whalen. Yet in this case, Nixon v Administrator of General Services,' the Court did little to clarify the scope of informational privacy rights, leaving the courts of appeals to build a framework for evaluating informational privacy claims. Every circuit court but the D.C. Circuit recognizes Whalen as establishing a separate constitutional right to informational privacy. These courts have created a conceptually diverse but relatively stable framework for evaluating informational privacy claims. However, this framework was built on the informational privacy claims of adults. Recently, courts have been asked to assess similar claims brought by minors and have responded in two ways.7 The Third and Ninth Circuits have applied their informational privacy analysis to minors with