(Reuters) – A federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that guidance issued by President Joe Biden's administration prohibiting hospitals and other medical providers from using online tracking technologies that monitor users of their websites was illegal.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman in Fort Worth sided with two hospital trade groups, including the American Hospital Association, and two local health care systems in ruling that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. exceeded its authority when it adopted policy guidance to promote privacy.
The guidance published in 2022 warned healthcare providers that allowing third-party technology companies to collect and analyze information collected from visitors to their websites or apps could violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
That 1996 federal law prohibits the public disclosure of people's private health information to protect them against discrimination, stigma or other negative consequences. Hospitals that violate the law may face sanctions.
The guidance, published as an HHS Office of Civil Rights bulletin, targeted public hospital websites and said the proliferation of trackers on healthcare websites can reveal people's diagnoses, frequency of medical visits and put people at risk of suffering other consequences. .
But Pittman, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, said HHS went too far in interpreting “individually identifiable health information” protected by HIPAA to also cover metadata from a user's search on a public website.
“To maintain otherwise would empower HHS and other executive entities to take increasing liberties with the finite authority granted to them,” Pittman wrote. “The Court is not willing to set that precedent here.”
The judge struck down the guidance, which HHS recently revised after the American Hospital Association, the nation's largest hospital lobby group, and its co-plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in November.
HHS had no immediate comment.
Chad Golder, general counsel for the AHA, said in a statement that with the court ruling, “hospitals and health systems will once again be able to rely on these important technologies to provide their communities with reliable and accurate health care information.”
The AHA and its co-plaintiffs filed their case in federal court in Fort Worth, a venue that has become a favorite for litigants challenging the agenda of Biden, a Democrat, and whose two active judges are Republican appointees. .
The guidance was issued as hospitals increasingly faced class-action lawsuits accusing them of mishandling patient information as a result of their use of analytics technologies provided by Alphabet's Google (NASDAQ ), Meta Platforms (NASDAQ and other third-party companies that collected data about website visitors.
The agency had argued that the guidance was not binding and later revised it to say that it does not “have the force and effect of law.”
But Pittman said it provides guidance on mandatory legal obligations and that such agency guidance can “serve as a Trojan horse for bureaucrats changing the rules of the game.”
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