Government Protection Law

Government protection law covers many different areas of law that safeguard the rights and liberties of citizens against the dictates of a state. Examples of this type of law include data privacy laws as well as civil rights laws equal protection laws and labor laws. These rights are enshrined in the Constitution and enforced by the courts.

Privacy laws, such as, protect personal information collected by federal agencies. The Privacy Act establishes four procedural and substantive rights for individuals, including the right to have access to their own personal records from government agencies; to correct any information that may be in errors; to restrict the way their personal information is shared with other; and to file a suit against government agencies if they violate their rights. The Privacy Act’s “fair information practices” (FIPPs) are the foundation for many other privacy laws, such as the European Union Regulation 2016/679 on the https://mcalisterhallam.com/2023/06/07/government-protection-law/ Protection of Natural Persons with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data, or GDPR; the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act; the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act.

The FIPPs are also the basis of civil rights laws which safeguard citizens’ rights to freedom of expression and stop discrimination. To be able to succeed in a civil rights lawsuit they must prove that a government entity was unfairly treated them differently because of their protected characteristic. The court will employ one of three methods to evaluate the actions of the government agency in accordance with the nature and extent of the discrimination. These are three types of scrutiny: strict scrutiny; intermediate scrutiny; or the rational basis.