Privacy at the Margins

Limited legal protections for privacy leave minority communities vulnerable to concrete injuries and violence when their information is exposed. In Privacy at the Margins, Scott Skinner-Thompson highlights why privacy is of acute importance for marginalized groups. He explains how privacy can serve as a form of expressive resistance to government and corporate surveillance regimes - furthering equality goals - and demonstrates why efforts undertaken by vulnerable groups (queer folks, women, and racial and religious minorities) to protect their privacy should be entitled to constitutional protection under the First Amendment and related equality provisions. By examining the ways even limited privacy can enrich and enhance our lives at the margins in material ways, this work shows how privacy can be transformed from a liberal affectation to a legal tool of liberation from oppression.

Introduction; 1. No privacy in public = no privacy for the precarious; 2. Performative privacy in theory and practice; 3. Performative privacy's payoffs; 4. Containing corporate and privatized surveillance; 5. Outing privacy as anti-subordination; 6. Equal protection privacy; Conclusion.

Scott Skinner-Thompson is an Associate Professor at Colorado Law School, where he researches constitutional law, civil rights, and privacy law, with a particular focus on LGBTQ and HIV issues. He is the editor of AIDS and the Law (5th ed., 2016; 6th ed. 2020), one of the leading resources in the field. His work has also appeared in Slate, Salon, and The New Republic. In 2014, he was selected as one of the Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40 by the National LGBT Bar Association.