Section 16 Office Searches and Surveillance

• Library: Employer-Employee Law 2008

Government employers are not free to search personal property such as handbags or closed luggage that happens to be in an employee’s office. O’Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 715–16 (1987). Whether a public employer may search workplace property depends first on whether the employee has a reasonable expectation of privacy in that property. The plaintiff in O’Connor was a hospital physician whose office, desk, and file cabinets were searched for evidence of work-related improprieties. Five members of the Court agreed that the physician had an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in his desk and file cabinets. The plurality declined to decide whether he had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his entire office because the record did not reveal the extent to which other hospital employees were free to enter. Id. at 718. An employee is less likely to have...