In February 2004, privacy advocates were put off by a Supreme Court case called Doe v. Chao, in which the Court found that the Privacy Act requires a victim of a government privacy violation to show “actual damages” before receiving any compensation. The Act appeared to provide for $1,000 per violation in statutory damages, but the Court interpreted the legislation to require that actual damages be proven, after which the victim would be entitled to a minimum award of $1,000. (Statutory damages are appropriate in privacy cases against the government because government bureaucrats pay little price themselves when their agency gets fined. A penalty is required to draw oversight and political attention to violations of the law.)
Doe v. Chao was a close call given the statutory language, and the Court chose the outcome that would limit the government’s exposure to Privacy Act liability. Doing so marginally weakened the government’s attentiveness to the already insubstantial protections of the Privacy Act.
A companion case to Doe v. Chao has now reached the Supreme Court. FAA v. Cooper, which the highest court recently agreed to hear, involves a victim of a government privacy invasion who alleges “actual damages” based on evidence of mental and emotional distress. Cooper, a recreational pilot who was HIV-positive, had chosen to conceal his health status generally, but revealed it to the Social Security Administration for the purposes of pursuing disability payments. When the SSA revealed that he was HIV-positive to the Department of Transportation, it violated the Privacy Act. Cooper claims in court that he suffered mental and emotional distress at learning of the disclosure of his health status and inferentially his sexual orientation, which he had kept private.
In the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and now in the Supreme Court, the Obama Administration has argued that it doesn’t have to pay the victim of this privacy violation because mental and emotional distress do not qualify as “actual damages.” No one disputes that Cooper has to present objective proof of harm as a check on the truth of his claims. But the government isn’t saying that Cooper is faking distress at having his health status and sexual orientation illegally exposed by the government. The government is arguing that the court should limit “actual damages” to economic injury simply because it’s the government being sued.