- This Tuesday, the Center for Reproductive Rights, attorneys for the plaintiffs in Ferguson v. City of Charleston, will argue before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) did not obtain consent from its patients prior to submitting the results of urine tests to local law enforcement officials. Last year, the United States Supreme Court found that MUSC's actions violated the Fourth Amendment's search and seizure mandates in the absence of consent, and sent the issue of consent back to the lower court.
"This case is about the private confidentiality rights of every American when seeking medical treatment," said Priscilla Smith, lead counsel in the Ferguson case and Deputy Director of Litigation with the Center for Reproductive Rights. "In this case, not only did the hospital fail to obtain informed consent, they abused their patients' faith in the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship to obtain evidence for the police," added Smith.
The issue presented on Tuesday will be whether MUSC obtained their patients' "knowing consent" prior testing their urine. Several of the Ferguson plaintiffs testified that the hospital deceived them by using clever strategies: One patient stated that MUSC tricked her into providing urine by telling her that they needed to test her for dehydration; Other plaintiffs received the hospital's general hospital information letters after they had been searched for drugs. As such, the Center for Reproductive Rights maintains that no such consent was either requested or given, rendering MUSC's actions unwarranted searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.
In 2000, the Center for Reproductive Rights successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that MUSC's drug testing scheme was dangerous to the women and their children and counterproductive because it deterred women from seeking medical care. In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, found that the scheme violated all American citizens' constitutional rights to privacy when seeking medical treatment.
In addition to the Center for Reproductive Rights, the Petitioners are also represented by the Women’s Law Project, Philadelphia attorneys David Rudovsky and Seth Kreimer, and Charleston attorney Susan K. Dunn.
