The DEA is Trying to Get Open Access to Your Medical Records

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The DEA has been fighting legal battles for years in order to get access to private medical records without requiring a warrant.

To support a case against five Oregon individuals, the DEA subpoenaed the state’s Prescription Drug Monitor Program (PDMP) to provide access to private information on what drugs these individuals had been prescribed. The DEA claimed that it has the authority to access Oregon’s database using only an “administrative subpoena.” Unlike proper search warrants, these subpoenas do not require that the DEA show probable cause to a court.

The ACLU intervened on behalf of the individuals, who include two transgender men taking prescription hormone drugs, and another individual taking prescription anti-anxiety medication for PTSD. The Oregon PDMP sued the DEA in 2012 for requesting these records, arguing that fulfilling the request would violate the state’s privacy laws.

In 2014, District Court Judge Ancer L. Haggerty ruled against the DEA, calling the warrantless searches an egregious invasion of privacy. “It is difficult to conceive of information that is… more deserving of Fourth Amendment protection,” Haggerty said. “Although there is not an absolute right to privacy in prescription information… it is more than reasonable for patients to believe that law enforcement agencies will not have unfettered access to their records.”

Currently, every U.S. state has a PDMP database, except for Missouri. In Utah, Senator Todd Weiler introduced a bill that required cops to obtain a warrant before searching the state PDMP database. In Wisconsin, however, a recent law removed a previous requirement that cops obtain a search warrant to access that state’s database. The federal government is now working to combine every states’ PDMP into one central database. So far, 32 states have shared their residents’ private information via a National Association of Boards of Pharmacy program.

“The primary purpose of PDMPs is healthcare, not law enforcement,” the American Medical Association has said, noting that the databases were not designed to be “a tool or repository for law enforcement to initiate access to gather information.”

Filed under: General Problems