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A few weeks into sixth grade, Colman Chadam had to leave school because of his DNA.
The situation, odd as it may sound, played out like this. Colman has genetic markers for cystic fibrosis, and kids with the inherited lung disease can't be near each other because they're vulnerable to contagious infections. Two siblings with cystic fibrosis also attended Colman's middle school in Palo Alto, California in 2012. So Colman was out, even though he didn't actually have the disease, according to a lawsuit that his parents filed against the school district. The allegation? Genetic discrimination.
Yes, genetic discrimination. Get used to those two words together, because they're likely to become a lot more common. With DNA tests now cheap and readily available, the number of people getting tests has gone way up—along with the potential for discrimination based on the results. When Colman's school tried to transfer him based on his genetic status, the lawsuit alleges, the district violated the Americans With Disabilities Act and Colman's First Amendment right to privacy. "This is the test case," says the Chadam's lawyer, Stephen Jaffe.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday February 03 2016, @10:59PM
As I understand it (IANAL), the ADA requires employers, public institutions, etc., to make reasonable accommodations [wikipedia.org]for people with disabilities. As I understand it, that requires reasonable mitigating steps where possible, not a blanket prohibition on ever treating a disabled person differently. Wheelchair ramps, signs available in braile, screen readers for computers are all reasonable accommodations. Having an elevator in a building is a reasonable accommodation, but replacing all stairs with elevators so a disabled person never needs to take a longer route isn't required. If they want to claim the plaintiff is disabled, what's the reasonable accommodation that could have been made in this case? Requiring one student to go to another school is a hardship, but it's not clear how they expect the school could have mitigated to prevent that hardship if students with the same condition need to be separated from each other.
If they claim he's not sick, but merely has the POTENTIAL to be sick, you're adding a whole new protected class to the ADA - people who have the POTENTIAL to be disabled in the future because of their genes. Not saying it can't support that reading, but it's not clear that's an obvious extension. That's not to say the behavior isn't "discriminatory," but not all discriminatory behavior falls afoul of the ADA - someone who's African-American and is discriminated against is arguably being discriminated against because of their genes, but being African-American isn't generally considered a "disability" under the ADA. There are other laws that cover discrimination, and it's not clear (to me anyways) that the ADA is meant to cover this situation.
There is no Right to Privacy in the first amendment. The first amendment covers the right to free speech and free religion. Nor is there an explicit Right to Privacy in any amendment to the constitution (or the constitution itself). The notion of a constitutional "Right to Privacy" is a legal theory that's been accepted in multiple cases by the Supreme Court. The theory is that the overall tenor and purpose of the Bill of Rights is BASED on an implicit right to privacy, and the individual amendments of the Bill of Rights codify the most important specific freedoms required for a right to privacy.
This might be pedantic - the notion of a constitutional right to privacy IS accepted Supreme Court precedent. But people who refer to it as a "First Amendment Right" don't know what they're talking about. More problematically, people who refer to a specific "right to privacy" seem to think that the idea that the notion and extent of such a right are written down somewhere. Not really true. And so it's unclear what the extent of such a "right" really are, and where the limits are. Does it violate the "right to privacy" to publish an Amber Alert with the license plate number and name of someone who's only suspected of a crime? Does the individual's right to privacy trump the interest of public policy, and if so, how?
A better case would be made by looking at ACTUAL laws that set ACTUAL limits on what can and cannot be done with medical data. The problem there is that those laws don't actually support the lawsuit. HIPAA [hhs.gov] and friends explicitly cover privacy and disclosure of medical information. However, they don't avail much here. Unless you want to try and call the medical practicioners within a school system a separate "entity" than the school system itself, it's hard to call information disclosed on the school's medical form illegally disclosed to the school. Even if in general that were true, there are exceptions to the disclosure rule for reasons of Public Health and also for Serious Threat to Health. It would be reasonable to argue that one or both of these exceptions apply when there's a need to consider the potential threat to the OTHER children in the school district with Cystic Fibrosis.
Unless you want to try and strike down the HIPAA exceptions as unconstitutional violations of a "right to privacy," I don't see a lot of success on the argument that a notional "right to privacy" is so sacrosanct as to prevent disclosure of a potentially life-threatening concern. I suppose you could have a debate on how "imminent" the concern is given the plaintiff was only DISPOSED to cystic fibrosis, as opposed to having the disease, but now you're into a medical conversation on reasonableness, not a constitutional question about "rights."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 03 2016, @11:58PM
The fourth amendment establishes a right to privacy from the government, even if it doesn't explicitly mention privacy. Its logical effect is that is protects your privacy.
Does the individual's right to privacy trump the interest of public policy, and if so, how?
It does if the "public policy" violates the fourth amendment.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday February 04 2016, @02:17AM
even if they're not really disabled.
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