1st Circuit Court of Appeals upholds New Hampshire data-mining law

11/18/2008

Today the First Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld New Hampshire’s Prescription Confidentiality Act, which prohibits the commercial use of prescriber data, including for pharmaceutical detailing.

In its 148-page decision upholding the law, the Court said “the portions of the law at issue here regulate conduct, not speech” and even if they qualified as protected speech (the Court held they did not), New Hampshire’s restrictions on the use of prescription data would pass “constitutional muster” in regulating that speech.

 “This is an important decision for data privacy advocates," said Sean Fiil-Flynn, Counsel for the public interest amici in the case, and with whom the Prescription Project filed a friend of the court brief. "The ramifications of giving companies a First Amendment right to sell data on all of our purchases, travel and activities would be staggering. The First Circuit ruled on the side of consumer privacy, admonishing that the First Amendment does not protect every exchange of information from traditional social and economic regulation."

For more, read our blog post, press release or the full decision.