Privacy Act litigation
Privacy Act litigation concerns the tens of thousands of lawsuits related to the Privacy Act, a federal statute enacted in 1974 but which other versions subsequently enacted and tailored to specific issues such as finance or education.
As of March 2023, there are 16,022 reported federal court decisions, and 3,240 reported state court decisions (some of which may be to state privacy laws), that expressly mention a "Privacy Act." There have even been 8 tribal court decisions on this.
An opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed a Privacy Act in 33 separate cases, but some of those references are to a Privacy Act other than the one enacted in 1974 as follows:
| “ | Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978, 12 U. S. C. §3404(c) (“The customer has the right ... to obtain a copy of the record which the financial institution shall keep of all instances in which the customer’s record is disclosed to a Government authority pursuant to this section, including the identity of the Government authority to which such disclosure is made”); Government in the Sunshine Act, 5 U. S. C. §552b(f)(2) (“Copies of such transcript, or minutes, or a transcription of such recording disclosing the identity of each speaker, shall be furnished to any person at the actual cost of duplication or transcription”); Cable Act, 47 U. S. C. §551(d) (“A cable subscriber shall be provided access to all personally identifiable information regarding that subscriber which is collected and maintained by a cable operator”); Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, 20 U. S. C. §1232g(a)(1)(A) (“No funds shall be made available under any applicable program to any educational agency or institution which has a policy of denying, or which effectively prevents, the parents of students who are or have been in attendance at a school of such agency or at such institution, as the case may be, the right to inspect and review the education records of their children. ... Each educational agency or institution shall establish appropriate procedures for the granting of a request by parents for access to the education records of their children within a reasonable period of time, but in no case more than forty-five days after the request has been made”). | ” |
Carpenter v. United States, 138 S. Ct. 2206, 2257 n.3 (2018) (Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins, dissenting).
National Practitioner Data Bank
37 of those reported cases (33 federal) concern the National Practitioner Data Bank, which is an often misleading federal data bank used against physicians.
