## Facts

- New York enacted a 1972 drug-control law to address diversion of prescription drugs into illegal channels.
- The law required prescriptions for Schedule II drugs to be written on an official triplicate form.
- One copy of each Schedule II prescription, including patient name, address, age, drug and dosage, prescriber identity, and dispensing pharmacy, had to be filed with the State Department of Health.
- The State stored these forms in a computerized data bank, retained them for five years under security measures, and then destroyed them.
- Public disclosure of patient identity was prohibited; access was limited to a small number of health department and investigatory personnel, with penalties for unauthorized disclosure.
- Patients receiving Schedule II drugs, prescribing physicians, and physician associations challenged the patient-identification and centralized storage requirements as unconstitutional.
- A three-judge federal district court enjoined enforcement, finding an overbroad invasion of privacy and faulting the State for not demonstrating a sufficient need for patient-identifying data.
- The State appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether compelled collection and centralized storage of identifiable Schedule II prescription information violates a constitutionally protected right of privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.
2. Whether the program’s potential disclosure risks or alleged deterrent effects on patients and physicians amount to an unconstitutional burden on protected liberty interests.
3. Whether the State must prove the necessity of collecting patient-identifying information to sustain the statute’s constitutionality.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed and upheld the statute.
- The Court treated the law as a reasonable regulatory measure within the State’s police power to protect health and safety.
- The Court held that neither the existing operation nor the threatened impact of the program established a constitutionally significant invasion of privacy.
- The Court rejected the view that a failure to prove necessity, as found by the district court, was sufficient to invalidate the statute.
- The Court found the statutory confidentiality limits and security safeguards adequate to reduce disclosure risks to a constitutionally permissible level.
- Concurring opinions emphasized that different, more intrusive data-collection schemes could present distinct constitutional questions.

## Legal Principles

- The Constitution recognizes privacy-related interests that include (1) avoiding disclosure of personal matters and (2) independence in certain important personal decisions.
- Government collection and retention of sensitive personal information does not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment when the program serves legitimate public purposes and includes meaningful confidentiality and security protections.
- Courts generally evaluate informational-privacy claims by considering the character of the information collected, the governmental interests served, the extent of dissemination risk, and the safeguards limiting access and disclosure.
- A statute is not unconstitutional merely because a court considers the government’s chosen means broader than necessary; the absence of proven necessity does not alone establish a due process violation.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld New York’s requirement that Schedule II prescriptions include patient-identifying information filed in a state database, concluding that the program’s public health and law-enforcement aims, combined with limits on access and disclosure, did not amount to an invasion of privacy protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.


Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977)