A lawsuit against the state over a single email in 2021 has been dismissed by an appeals court.
In 2021, an employee of the former state Department of Public Safety emailed about 260 departmental workers about their responsibilities regarding COVID-19 vaccinations and tests.
Specifically, the email advised all recipients that they were required to submit negative COVID tests each Monday, contingent to a 2021 proclamation by then-Gov. David Ige requiring that state and county employees confirm to their departments whether they were vaccinated against COVID-19.
According to legal documents, the DPS employee who sent the email accidentally “cc’d” all recipients, allowing them to see all the email addresses of every other recipient. And the Hawai‘i Government Employees Association and United Public Workers alleged in a lawsuit that the slip-up “revealed the identify and vaccination status” of those email recipients to every other recipient, which the unions argued constituted negligence by DPS toward confidential personal information.
DPS disputed this claim, stating in its own response that no vaccination information was disclosed to any email recipient, and that the only personal information improperly handled was some 260 business email addresses shared among members of the same department.
Nonetheless, HGEA and UPW sued DPS on behalf of their members, about 200 of whom were included in the mass email. The suit accused DPS of invasion of privacy, negligent supervision and negligence.
The First Circuit Court dismissed the case in March 2022. But HGEA and UPW argued in an appeal that the court’s reasons for dismissal undermined the law and the state’s COVID policy.
“The First Circuit Court … overruled the Governor and Attorney General’s promise to keep employees’ COVID-19 vaccination status confidential … and immunized government employers when they release, unsolicited, records in which employees have a ‘significant privacy interest,’” read the unions’ appeal, written by Honolulu attorney Ted Hong in 2022.
The First Circuit Court had also ruled that the unions lacked standing to sue on behalf of its members, something Hong challenged in the appeal as well.
But the Hawai‘i Intermediate Court of Appeals once again ruled against the unions on Monday, although Associate Judge Clyde Wadsworth wrote that the unions were partly correct in their arguments.
For example, Wadsworth wrote that the unions were able to sue on behalf of their own members and the Circuit Court was wrong to dismiss the case on that ground.
Furthermore, Wadsworth determined that the erroneous email could be considered an invasion of privacy — even if the harmfulness of the improperly disclosed personal information was a question for a jury to decide.
Nonetheless, the unions’ claims of negligence and negligent supervision were found unwarranted.
Based on Wadsworth’s ruling, the case is remanded for further proceedings. Neither HGEA nor UPW responded to questions by Aloha State Daily regarding whether they will pursue the case further.
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation — one of two bodies DPS split into in 2024 — could not comment on the case Tuesday.
