Employer May Search Locked Areas With ‘Reasonable’ Cause : Court Rules on Public Workers’ Privacy

In the first test of the legal right to privacy in the workplace, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a public employer with a “reasonable” belief that an employee has violated work rules may search a locked office or desk for evidence.

The 5-4 ruling overturned an appeals court decision from California that said desks and offices were off limits to searches without a warrant from a magistrate. But the high court could not agree on a clear standard for deciding when a supervisor may inspect the desks, files or offices of employees.

Instead, a bare majority agreed only to reject the extreme positions that employees have no right to property privacy or that supervisors must obtain search warrants to go into employee offices.

Further Hearings

The justices then ordered further lower court hearings into the case at hand, which involves a Napa hospital psychiatrist accused of various improprieties who was dismissed in 1981 after administrators searched his locked office.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, said that public employees can have a “reasonable expectation of privacy” in the workplace and, therefore, are covered by the Fourth Amendment, which bans “unreasonable searches and seizures.”

However, O’Connor added, it “would seriously disrupt the routine conduct of business” if a supervisor had to get a search warrant to “retrieve a needed file” or to investigate charges of “work-related misconduct.”

Employers who have “reasonable grounds for suspecting that a search will turn up evidence that the employee is guilty of work-related misconduct” are justified in entering locked offices or desks, she said. Her opinion was signed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Lewis F. Powell Jr. and Byron R. White. Justice Antonin Scalia concurred only in the judgment.

‘General Rummaging’

The four dissenters complained that Tuesday’s decision appears to permit supervisors to engage in a “general rummaging” through workers’ desks or file cabinets based only on a vague suspicion that something is amiss.

The Fourth Amendment restricts searches by government officials, including police. The court did not address private workplaces in its ruling.

Appropriately, reaction to the decision was mixed. “It is certainly a blow to public employees, but it is not nearly as bad as what the Administration suggested,” said Craig Becker, a lawyer representing the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

California state attorneys joined the Reagan Administration in arguing that government employees do not have privacy rights in government offices and desks.

‘Too Much Discretion’

Becker and other public employee attorneys said they were pleased that the high court said workers were protected by the Fourth Amendment, but Becker added that the plurality opinion “leaves too much discretion in the hands of supervisors.”

State officials said they were reasonably pleased with the decision. “We can live with this. It says the employer has the right to search a desk or office if it is for a legitimate, work-related purpose,” said Tyler Pon, a deputy attorney general for California.

The case arose when officials of a state hospital in Napa heard charges that Dr. Magno Ortega had engaged in “possible improprieties,” ranging from taking home a computer to sexually harassing female employees.

Search Ordered

He was placed on leave and the hospital administrator, Dennis O’Connor, ordered a search of his locked office and file cabinets. Ortega, a psychiatrist who had worked at the hospital for 17 years, was later fired.

Ortega sued hospital officials, saying that they had violated his rights by searching a private office. A District Court dismissed the suit but, in 1985, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor and ordered the officials to pay damages. The California attorney general appealed the case to the Supreme Court.

Justice O’Connor said the District Court must reexamine the facts of the case (O’Connor vs. Ortega, 85-530) to judge whether the search was necessary and whether the “scope of the intrusion was itself reasonable.” The dissenters said hospital officials should have gotten a search warrant before entering the office.