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A federal judge on Thursday allowed the American Civil Liberties Union to intervene in a case where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is seeking access to a Utah database containing 70 million prescription drug records without complying with a state law that requires a search warrant from a court.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead ruled the ACLU could participate in the case on behalf of itself, a Salt Lake County firefighters union, Equality Utah and two unnamed individuals who use prescription drugs.
The groups may have social justice and privacy issues they can raise that the Attorney General's Office, which is defending the law, cannot, Pead said at the end of a two-hour hearing.
U.S. Department of Justice attorney Kathryn L. Wyer, representing the DEA, argued that under federal law the agency has the authority to obtain records using administrative subpoenas that do not require court approval. The case was brought in June after the state refused to turn over information in response to a 2015 DEA subpoena.
"This would be the first case to allow a movant (one who seeks a favorable ruling) to intervene in an administrative subpoena enforcement action," Wyer said in urging Pead not to allow the ACLU into the case.
Wyer declined to say after the hearing whether the federal government will appeal Pead's decision.
The database was created in 1995 and has 70 million records of individual prescriptions for controlled substances that are regulated.
The DEA subpoena that prompted the case sought records for prescriptions that a physician issued to two people with possible ties to international criminals, whom agents suspect then turned around and sold the drugs, Wyer said.
Law officers enjoyed nearly unfettered access to the database before the Legislature passed a law in 2015 that required search warrants.
That means officers have to convince a judge there is "probable cause" to believe that a violation of the law occurred in order to obtain a warrant. No such proof is required under administrative subpoenas, which are allowed under federal law and governed by DEA rules and standards.
Nathan Wessler, an ACLU attorney from New York, told Pead said there were significant constitutional and privacy issues involved in the case that warrant the groups' intervention.
"We absolutely think there's a public interest, a strong public interest," Wessler said.
Pead agreed, saying in a ruling from the bench that Utahns "have an expectation of privacy for their confidential prescription records."
Salt Lake County firefighters are interested in the issue because in 2013 local police searched records in the database involving all 480 firefighters as part of an investigation into medications missing from ambulances.
Unified Fire Assistant Chief Marlon Jones was arrested in May 2013 because he was suspected of using three doctors to obtain excessive medications. The charges were later dropped. Jones sued in federal court but a judge dismissed the lawsuit and that decision is now under appeal.
Equality Utah, a rights group that supports gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens, sought to intervene because transgender men are prescribed drugs that would show, if revealed, that they are transitioning from female to male, ACLU attorneys wrote in seeking entry in to the case.