W.D.Pa.: No standing to contest civil investigative demands to third parties over medical records

Defendant had no standing to contest civil investigative demands to third parties, even involving medical records of others. United States v. Hertel & Brown Physical & Aquatic Therapy, 2025 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 6437 (W.D. Pa. Jan. 13, 2025):

Defendants have offered no persuasive legal authority that alters the Court’s conclusion on this point. The decisions they cite as recognizing a protected privacy interest in medical data generally concern an individual’s privacy interest in his own medical data, which is not at issue here. See, e.g., Ferguson v. City of Charleston, 532 U.S. 67, 70-76, 78, 121 S. Ct. 1281, 149 L. Ed. 2d 205 (2001) (“[t]he reasonable expectation of privacy enjoyed by the typical patient undergoing diagnostic tests in a hospital is that the results of those tests will not be shared with nonmedical personnel without her consent.”); Skinner v. Railway Labor Execs. Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 617, 109 S. Ct. 1402, 103 L. Ed. 2d 639 (1989) (holding that railway employees had reasonable expectation of privacy in mandated drug test results while upholding the policy at issue under the specific circumstances); Nat’l. Treas. Emps. Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 665, 109 S. Ct. 1384, 103 L. Ed. 2d 685 (1989) (recognizing that Customs employees have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their drug test results but upholding the warrantless testing program explicitly because the results could not be used in criminal prosecutions). Defendants’ reliance on to Zadeh, supra, and Tucson Woman’s Clinic v. Eden, 379 F.3d 531 (9th Cir. 2004), is also unhelpful, as those decisions involved government agents searching and/or seizing medical records directly from a medical facility without a warrant. Compare, e.g., Barry v. Freshour, 905 F.3d 912, 914-15 (5th Cir. 2018) (physician lacked standing to raise Fourth Amendment challenge to subpoenaed medical records where his asserted interest in the information was tied to his patients’ privacy interests in their own medical records.); United States v. Gayden, 977 F.3d 1146 (11th Cir. 2020) (physician had no privacy interest in prescription records that law enforcement obtained without a search warrant from Florida’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program); United States v. Evers, Crim. No. 3:19-CR-250, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 200425, 2021 WL 4846241, *8-9 (M.D. Pa. October 18, 2021) (physician lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in medical records that were not within his control).

In sum, the Court has concluded that the Third-Party Doctrine governs the agents’ acquisition of health insurance billing information in this case. Because no protected Fourth Amendment interests of the Defendants were implicated by this conduct, there was no “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment such that a warrant would have been required. Accordingly, the Government’s warrantless acquisition of the records did not violate the Defendants’ Fourth Amendment rights, despite the fact that the records were sought in connection with a criminal investigation.