Overview

The Poverty of Privacy Rights makes a simple, controversial argument: Poor mothers in America have been deprived of the right to privacy. The U.S. Constitution is supposed to bestow rights equally. Yet the poor are subject to invasions of privacy that can be perceived as gross demonstrations of governmental power without limits. Courts have routinely upheld the constitutionality of privacy invasions on the poor, and legal scholars typically understand marginalized populations to have ""weak versions"" of the privacy rights everyone else enjoys. Khiara M. Bridges investigates poor mothers' experiences with the state-both when they receive public assistance and when they do not. Presenting a holistic view of just how the state intervenes in all facets of poor mothers' privacy, Bridges shows how the Constitution has not been interpreted to bestow these women with family, informational, and reproductive privacy rights. Bridges seeks to turn popular thinking on its head: Poor mothers' lack of privacy is not a function of their reliance on government assistance-rather it is a function of their not bearing any privacy rights in the first place. Until we disrupt the cultural narratives that equate poverty with immorality, poor mothers will continue to be denied this right.

Full Product Details

Author:   Khiara M. Bridges
Publisher:   Stanford University Press
Imprint:   Stanford University Press
ISBN:  

9780804795456

ISBN 10:   0804795452
Pages:   296
Publication Date:   20 June 2017
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Contents and AbstractsIntroduction chapter abstractThis introduction describes this book's thesis: Poor mothers have been deprived of family, informational, and reproductive privacy rights. Those who are empowered to interpret the Constitution have construed the document to bestow wealthier women with rights that protect their families from state regulation, prevent their most intimate information from being collected and disclosed to third parties, and provide them with a space to decide whether to become mothers without the government influencing their decisions. Simultaneously, the Constitution has been construed to deny poor mothers (and those facing the question of whether to become mothers) those same rights. Because privacy rights are thought to yield specific values, they are recognized and protected; and because it is assumed that these privacy rights will not yield these same values when individuals who are behaviorally and ethically deficient bear them, poor mothers have been denied these rights. 1The Moral Construction of Poverty chapter abstractThis chapter documents the ubiquitous voices throughout history that have rejected structural explanations of poverty and, instead, have argued that poverty is the result of individual shortcomings. This chapter shows that the discursive link between poverty and immorality continues to the present day: One can easily hear a narrative in political or popular discourse that links poverty with behavioral or ethical deficiencies. This chapter also shows that the Court's jurisprudence has come to reflect the moral construction of poverty, examining several cases in which the Court's rationale for refusing to limit the power of the government vis-à-vis poor individuals reveals an assumption about the pathology of the poor person—usually a poor mother—subject to privacy invasions. This chapter goes on to make the argument that positive rights are not the solution to poor mothers' predicament. 2The Unconstitutional Conditions Doctrine: Revealing, Yet Misleading chapter abstractThis chapter explores the doctrine of unconstitutional conditions, which provides that it is unconstitutional for a state to premise the conferral of a benefit on the beneficiary's surrender of a constitutional right. The chapter argues that unconstitutional conditions cases reveal the justification for the state's denial of privacy rights to poor mothers, showing that the state denies individuals a right when it disbelieves that the individual will realize the value that the right is intended to generate. This chapter goes on to show that poor women lack privacy even when they do not receive a welfare benefit. It contextualizes the privacy invasions that poor mothers endure when receiving welfare benefits in a broader experience of privacy invasions endured by virtue of being poor. This contextualization demonstrates that poor mothers' lack of privacy rights is not a function of reliance on government assistance, but a function of their poverty. 3Family Privacy chapter abstractThis chapter explores various justifications for the family privacy right including instrumental, noninstrumental, and pragmatic justifications. It concludes that the moral construction of poverty counsels in favor of dispossessing poor mothers of the right because it suggests that poor mothers will not realize the value that the right is designed to yield. The chapter goes on to examine the overrepresentation of the poor as subjects of child welfare investigations and within the foster care system—two governmental interventions into the family that the family privacy right purports to allow only when the state suspects child maltreatment. It then shows that the fact of poverty itself gives the state reason to suspect child maltreatment. Accordingly, the state always has the authority to infringe on poor mothers' right to family privacy. The chapter concludes by suggesting that a right that is always already infringed is not right at all. 4Informational Privacy chapter abstractThis chapter explores the justification for the informational privacy right and concludes that poor mothers have been deprived of it because, as with family privacy rights, the informational privacy rights will not yield the value they aredesigned to yield when poor mothers bear them. This chapter goes on to describe a type of right to informational privacy that has not yet been conceptualized fully in the literature. This right, absent compelling circumstances, would prevent the state from coercing those who are marginalized culturally and socially to perform confessions that might be taken to justify their marginalization. This right would be the equivalent of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against being compelled to be a witness against oneself, except it would apply in noncriminal contexts. 5Reproductive Privacy chapter abstractThis chapter explores reproductive privacy rights and concludes that poor women have been deprived of these rights because society does not trust their ability to make competent, moral decisions about reproduction without state oversight. This chapter documents how Medicaid, through the Hyde Amendment, intrudes into the domain that reproductive privacy rights are designed to protect by constraining the decisions that poor women make concerning abortion. This chapter also discusses how TANF family cap policies intrude into the domain that reproductive privacy rights are designed to protect by constraining poor women's decisions about giving birth to another child. This chapter notes the contradiction of the Hyde Amendment's pronatalism and TANF's antinatalism. It concludes that this contradiction reveals that the state is not interested in the precise decision that poor women make with respect to maternity, but rather is interested in overseeing that decision as she makes it. Conclusion chapter abstractThe conclusion proposes that poor mothers will only enjoy the positive or negative privacy rights that are formally bestowed to them when an individual's economic failure is no longer thought to indicate a flawed character. It examines other historical moments where disenfranchised groups struggled for rights that had been denied to them, focusing on black people's struggle for the right to vote and sexual minorities' struggle for the right to marry. These precedents reveal that formerly disenfranchised groups were successful in acquiring the rights that they sought not because they appealed to the Court to interpret the Constitution differently, but because they shifted the cultural discourse. The law ultimately came to reflect that transformation of culture. The lesson of history is that poor mothers will only be granted privacy rights when our culture shifts, and the moral construction of poverty is unseated from its present discursive throne.

Reviews

<i>The Poverty of Privacy Rights</i> is a provocative, courageous account of poor women's lives and the American healthcare system. One of the brightest stars of her generation, Khiara Bridges pushes against the traditional framings of sex-based privacy erosion to deftly articulate an urgent contemporary social concern--privacy rights filtered, constrained, and tampered by government. Bridges masterfully argues that to be poor in the United States and dependent on governmental assistance is to experience intrusions and violations of constitutional rights unrivaled by all others. --Michele Goodwin, University of California Irvine

The Poverty of Privacy Rights pushes the conceptualization of legal rights into a new and useful direction, establishing a sturdy platform for intelligent advocacy on behalf of poor people and their dignity. Khiara Bridges' deep knowledge of the social welfare and health care system, and the conversations her book invites will bring more privacy concerns affecting the poor to the forefront. -- Anita Allen University of Pennsylvania The Poverty of Privacy Rights is a provocative, courageous account of poor women's lives and the American healthcare system. One of the brightest stars of her generation, Khiara Bridges pushes against the traditional framings of sex-based privacy erosion to deftly articulate an urgent contemporary social concern-privacy rights filtered, constrained, and tampered by government. Bridges masterfully argues that to be poor in the United States and dependent on governmental assistance is to experience intrusions and violations of constitutional rights unrivaled by all others. -- Michele Goodwin, University of California Irvine

-The Poverty of Privacy Rights is a provocative, courageous account of poor women's lives and the American healthcare system. One of the brightest stars of her generation, Khiara Bridges pushes against the traditional framings of sex-based privacy erosion to deftly articulate an urgent contemporary social concern--privacy rights filtered, constrained, and tampered by government. Bridges masterfully argues that to be poor in the United States and dependent on governmental assistance is to experience intrusions and violations of constitutional rights unrivaled by all others.---Michele Goodwin, University of California -Irvine -

Author Information

Khiara M. Bridges is Professor of Law and of Anthropology at Boston University. She is the author of Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization (2011).

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