Planned Parenthood Affiliates v. Van De Kamp

Opinion

LOW, P. J.

California’s Child Abuse Reporting Law (Pen. Code, § 11165 et seq.) is designed to combat child neglect and the physical, emotional and sexual victimization of children. The law requires health care, educational, and other professionals to report known or suspected instances of child abuse to law enforcement or other governmental agencies. Failure to report may be punished as a misdemeanor. After investigation, substantiated reports are transmitted to the Department of Justice and lodged in a statewide computer data bank. We must decide whether the law requires a professional, who has no knowledge or suspicion of actual abuse, to nevertheless report a minor as a child abuse victim solely because the minor is under the age of 14 and has indicated that he or she engages in voluntary, consensual sexual activity with another minor of similar age. We hold the reporting law imposes no such requirement.

By this petition for writ of mandate, petitioners challenge a 1984 opinion of the Attorney General which applies the reporting law to all sexual activity

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of minors under 14, without regard to whether the minor is the victim of child abuse or is engaging in voluntary sexual conduct. Petitioners contend the Legislature did not intend to include such conduct within the ambit of the reporting law, particularly since the Legislature has established a right to confidential reproductive health care for minors under 14. Petitioners further argue that if the Legislature did intend voluntary conduct to be reported, the requirement would violate two aspects of the minors’ right to privacy guaranteed by the California Constitution. The reporting requirement would violate the substantive right of sexual privacy by unduly burdening the minors’ rights to make reproductive health care decisions, and it would violate the right to informational privacy by disclosing intimate medical information to the state for placement in a permanent computer file.

We issued a stay order in light of the sensitive privacy issues raised by the petition, and because the reporting provisions put health care professionals to the “Hobson’s choice” between violating nonabused patients’ confidentiality by reporting their sexual conduct to the state, or suffering criminal prosecution for failure to make a report. Because of the statewide impact of the reporting provision, we gave our stay order statewide effect pending our resolution of the serious matters raised by the petition. Our stay order in no way interfered with enforcement of the reporting requirement with regard to actual child abuse, whether physical, emotional, sexual, or conduct amounting to child neglect. We issued the alternative writ and heard oral argument. The peremptory writ of mandate is granted.