State Constitutions

Many states, such as California, also include specific guarantees of privacy and free speech in their state constitutions that further augment the federal constitutional rights.

• Right to Free Expression: Article I, section 2 of the California State Constitution guarantees that "every person may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects" and that California laws "may not restrain or abridge liberty of speech." California courts have held that safeguarding free speech from government intrusion is a paramount concern because speech is "a freedom which is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom."
• Right to Privacy: Article I, section 1 of the California Constitution guarantees an "inalienable" right to privacy. The Privacy Amendment, overwhelmingly passed by ballot proposition in 1972, was specifically intended to safeguard informational privacy by preventing the expansion of data collection and the potential misuse of that data by both the government and the private sector. Unlike most constitutional provisions, Article I, section 1 applies to private parties as well as to the government.
• No Unreasonable Search and Seizure: Article I, section 13 of the California Constitution also protects data privacy by safeguarding citizens from unlawful governmental searches and seizures more expansively than the parallel version of the Fourth Amendment. In contrast to federal courts, the California Supreme Court has held that Californians do not necessarily relinquish the privacy of personal information when they provide information that is necessary to participate in modern life to third parties. Since it is a "fiction" that providing information to companies to engage in necessary activities is voluntary, individuals do not automatically forfeit their reasonable expectation of privacy in their information.