Decisions: Mailed Junk & Privacy Bunk

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To raise a bit of extra revenue, New York State sells its list of motor-vehicle owners, complete with addresses, to the highest bidder. New York vehicle owners are thereupon inundated with predictable bales of junk mail, sales-pitch telephone calls, and even personal visits by hawkers of various products. The situation became so intolerable to Old Leftist Author and 1967 Valiant Owner Corliss Lament that he sued to prevent the state from selling his name. In the warming winds of judicial concern over invasion of privacy, Lament thought his chances good.

No luck. In a sprightly opinion, U.S. District Judge Marvin Frankel sympathized with Lamont but dismissed his suit. The state's revenue-raising technique "may not be the most inspired kind of government function," said Frankel, but "the information sold is not vital or intimate. It is, moreover, in the category of 'public records,' available to anyone upon demand." The court really ought not to intrude in this area, he went on, since "there is no invidious discrimination, no problem of a wrong unreachable at the polls, no suggestion of an affliction confined to a relatively helpless minority."

Finally, there is no "captive quality" to the alleged invasion of privacy. "The mailbox, however noxious its advertising contents often seem to judges as well as other people, is hardly the kind of enclave that requires constitutional defense to protect 'the privacies of life.' The short though regular journey from mailbox to trash can is an acceptable burden, at least so far as the Constitution is concerned. And the bells at the door and on the telephone, though their ring is a more imperious nuisance than the mailman's tidings," constitute merely "peripheral assaults."