Privacy & the Constitution

No. The Constitution only guarantees privacy in one's home, not one's place of business or in public.

 

That's the 4th Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Courts have recognized other constitutional limits to government intrusion. In the 1920s, Nebraska's ban on foreign language instruction and Oregon's ban on private schooling were found to violate parents' fundamental right to direct their childrens' education, based on the 14th Amendment's "due process" guarantee. States could not run roughshod over rights people rightly assume they have. A few justices cited the 10th Amendment ("powers...reserved...to the people") as well.
Ironically, decades later the nebulous reasoning of these family autonomy rulings was twisted into individual rights of privacy for abortion and sodomy, suddenly discovered in the "penumbra" of the Bill of Rights.

There are also non-constitutional common law (invasion of privacy) and legislative (health information, telemarketer no-call list) privacy protections.

 

The 14th Amendment has been used to excuse all kinds of judicial legislation.

 

Wasn't the so-called "Right to Privacy" one of the principal bases of the 1973 Roe v Wade Supreme Court ruling?

 

[FONT=VERDANA, ARIAL, HELVETICA][SIZE=-1]"Justice Harry Blackmun, the author of the majority opinion, stated that the Constitution does not explicitly mention a right to privacy but, "in varying contexts the Court or individual justices have, indeed, found at least the roots of that right." The right to an abortion was then considered an extension of this privacy right. As Blackmun stated,"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy." This decision made it unconstitutional for any state to restrict abortion in most circumstances." [/SIZE][/FONT]

 

In other words, a right to privacy should be objectional to strict constructionists.