what laws are violated if an employee post a picture of a client on a social media network site?

[Kappa kappa Psi]

What laws are violated if an employee post a picture of a client (mental illness and multiple disorders) onto a social network and made jokes about that person with friends of theirs.

For example lets just say a employee takes a picture of a client with a toe used for a thumb. And the employee states that, that man is her baby daddy, while other commenting wtf, and etc.
The employee works for a non-profit human service agency

[Vox Republica]

While I haven't cross-referenced the specific regulation, that sounds like a rather severe HIPAA violation.

EDIT: To people claiming to have expertise on the subject because they took a semester's worth of courses on the subject (I'm not even sure how you can stretch HIPAA regs into a whole semester, but that's neither here nor there), two things undermine such a point: one, somebody that studied the subject for a semester should know the difference between HIPAA and the non-existent acronym HIPPA; two, the disclosure of PHI by non-health care organizations entrusted with PHI would still constitute a violation of HIPAA regs.

[Dr. Snark]

Depends on what kind of place the employer is. If it is a healthcare facility of some sort, the employee would be in violation of HIPAA for starters.

[?]

None. Those types of privacy laws only apply when health care professionals divulge personal medical information, coming from a regular citizen, it's defamation and that's a stretch since the conditions being leaked are probably true.

In sum, unless a health care professional spread this information, it's just simple rumor spreading, I use the word rumor lightly since most of the claims are probably true.

I've taken an entire semester of HIPPA law, I know enough to tell you both of these answers are wrong. Without any mention of a health care professional (nurse or doctor) spreading this info, this person has absolutely no recourse.

It's truly amazing what people will thumbs up without the proper facts being present.

"The employee works for a non-profit human service agency" it doesn't sound like a HIPPA violation then, it may be a violation of company policy and could be treated as such if deemed to be true.