69.20 Disclosure of information from vital records.
(1) A person with a direct and tangible interest in a vital record is any of the following:
(a) The registrant of the vital record.
(b) A member of the registrant's immediate family.
(c) The parent of a registrant, unless the parent is a birth parent whose parental rights to the registrant have been terminated under ch. 48.
(d) The registrant's legal custodians or guardians.
(e) A representative authorized by any person under pars. (a) to (d), including an attorney.
(f) Any other person who demonstrates a direct and tangible interest when information is necessary for the determination or protection of a personal or property right.
(2)
(a) Except as provided under sub. (3), information in the part of a record of birth, divorce or annulment, termination of domestic partnership, marriage, or a declaration of domestic partnership that is designated on the record as being collected for statistical or medical and statistical use only and information in the part of a death record that is designated on the record as being collected as statistical-use-only information under s. 69.18 (1m) (c) may not be disclosed to any person except the following:
1. The subject of the information, or, if the subject is a minor, his or her parent or guardian.
2. For a death record, any of the persons specified under s. 69.18 (4) (a) 1g. to 6. or an individual who is authorized in writing by one of the persons.
(b) Except as provided under sub. (3), the state registrar and local registrars may not permit inspection of or disclose information contained in any record of a birth which occurred after September 30, 1907 if the mother of the subject of the record was not married at any time from the conception to the birth of the subject of the record, unless the inspection is by or the information is disclosed to a person who has a direct and tangible interest in such record.
(c) Except as provided under sub. (3), until 50 years after a decedent's date of death, the state registrar and a local registrar may not permit inspection of or disclose information contained in the portion under s. 69.18 (1m) (b) 2. and 3. of the death record to anyone except to a person specified under sub. (1), or to a direct descendent of the decedent.
(3)
(a) The state registrar or a local registrar may effect a disclosure of information prohibited under sub. (2) if a court of competent jurisdiction orders the disclosure and specifies the vital record which is to be disclosed.
(b) The state registrar may effect disclosure of information prohibited under sub. (2) if the person to whom the information will be disclosed has signed and given to the state registrar a written agreement specifying the conditions under which the information will be used, as designated by the state registrar and if:
1. The information will be used for health or demographic research or for a public health program.
2. The information will be used by the federal agency responsible for compilation of national statistics and if the federal agency shares the cost of collecting, processing and transmitting the data. The federal agency may not use the information for any purpose except compilation of national statistics unless the federal agency specifies the other purpose to the state registrar and the state registrar gives written authorization for such use.
3. The information is from the vital record of a registrant who is a resident of another state or who was born in another state and is transmitted to the office responsible for keeping the vital statistics in such state under an interstate cooperation agreement which requires that the information be used for statistical and administrative purposes only and which provides for the retention and disposition of such copies. If under such an agreement the state registrar receives information from an office responsible for keeping the vital statistics in another state, the state registrar may not use the information for any purpose except the compilation of statistics.
4. The information is from a birth record which indicates that the registrant has a congenital disability and is submitted to the department of public instruction.
5. The information is submitted to a public school system in this state for the purpose of compiling demographic statistics related to planning.
(c) Notwithstanding sub. (2), a local registrar may disclose information on a birth record or issue a copy of the record to a local health department, as defined in s. 250.01 (4), for health or demographic research or a public health program if the local health department pays the copying costs and if the birth of the registrant occurred within the boundaries of the political subdivision served by the local health department or the registrant is a resident of the political subdivision. The local health department may not disclose any information from any copy which it receives under this paragraph to any person and shall destroy the copy no later than one year after receipt.
(d) Subject to par. (f), the state or a local registrar may disclose information from the vital record of a specified registrant, except information under sub. (2) (a), to a federal agency, to any agency of the government of this state or to any agency of a county, city, town or village if the agency requests the information for use in the conduct of its official duties.
(e) Public use indexes of birth, death, marriage, divorce, domestic partnership, termination of domestic partnership, or annulment records that are filed in the system of vital records at the state or local level are accessible only by inspection at the office of the state registrar or of a local registrar and may not be copied or reproduced except as follows:
1.
a. Birth record index information may be copied or reproduced for the public only after 100 years have elapsed from the year in which the birth occurred. No information in the index that has been impounded under s. 69.15 may be released.
b. Subdivision 1. a. does not apply to birth record indexes of events that occurred before October 1, 1907.
2. Indexes of death, marriage, divorce, domestic partnership, termination of domestic partnership, or annulment records may be copied or reproduced for the public after 24 months have elapsed from the year in which the event occurred.
3. Beginning January 1, 2003, any information that is obtained from an index under subd. 1. or 2. and that is released shall contain the following statement: “This information is not a legal vital record index. Inclusion of any information does not constitute legal verification of the fact of the event."
(f) The state or a local registrar may disclose a social security number on a vital record to the department of children and families or a county child support agency under s. 59.53 (5) in response to a request under s. 49.22 (2m).
(g) The state or local registrar, upon request of the department of revenue, may disclose information on vital records, including a social security number, to the department of revenue only for the following purposes related to administering state taxes and collection of debts referred to the department of revenue:
1. Locating persons, or the assets of persons, who have failed to file tax returns, have underreported their taxable income, or are delinquent debtors.
2. Identifying fraudulent tax returns and credit claims.
3. Providing information for tax-related prosecutions.
(h)
1. In this paragraph, “ qualified independent researcher" means a faculty member of a university who satisfies all of the following:
a. The faculty member has an approved protocol from an institutional review board for human subjects research to work with data containing personal information for the purposes of evaluating the program under s. 119.23.
b. The faculty member has received from the state and properly managed data containing personal information for the purposes of evaluating the program under s. 119.23 before July 14, 2015.
2. The state registrar shall effect a disclosure of information prohibited under sub. (2) to a qualified independent researcher for the purpose of cross-matching the information disclosed by the registrar with information in a database that both is in the possession of the qualified independent researcher and contains information regarding pupils participating in the program under s. 119.23. The state registrar may charge a fee to the qualified independent researcher for the information that does not exceed the cost incurred by the state registrar to provide the information.
(4) Under procedures that are promulgated by rule, the state registrar and every local registrar shall protect vital records from mutilation, alteration, theft, or fraudulent use and shall protect the privacy rights of registrants and their families by strictly controlling direct access to any vital record.
History: 1985 a. 315; 1993 a. 27; 1995 a. 27 s. 9145 (1); 1997 a. 27, 191; 2001 a. 16; 2007 a. 20, 58; 2009 a. 28; 2013 a. 20; 2015 a. 55, 157; 2017 a. 334.