A U.S. district judge has ruled a high schol girl can sue the school that told her mother the girl was kissing another girl at school, even though many people at the school understood her to be gay. Seems to me the public disclosure of private fact tort requires a private fact.
Oliver Sipple’s mother did not know he was active in San Francisco’s gay community until he saved the president’s life and the S.F. Chronicle published the fact. An appeals court in 1984 ruled “There can be no privacy with respect to a matter which is already public or which has previously become part of the ‘public domain.’ Once the information is released, unlike a physical object, it cannot be recaptured and sealed.” Sipple v. Chronicle Publishing