United States v. Huping Zhou

Defendant-Appellant Huping Zhou, a former research assistant at the University of California at Los Angeles Health System (UHS), accessed patient records without authorization after his employment was terminated. In an information, the government charged him with violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which imposes a misdemeanor penalty on “[a] person who knowingly and in violation of this part ... obtains individually identifiable health information relating to an individual^]” 42 U.S.C. § 1320d-6(a)(2) (emphasis added). Zhou moved to dismiss the information because it did not allege that Zhou knew that the statute prohibited him from obtaining the health information. The district court denied the motion to dismiss. Zhou entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss.

We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm the district court because the plain text of Section 1320d-6(a)(2) is not limited to defendants who knew that their actions were illegal. Rather, the misdemeanor applies to defendants who knowingly obtained individually identifiable health information…