Warrantless Search in the Law Enforcement Workplace

Abstract

One of the earliest areas of employee Fourth Amendment privacy juris prudence in the law enforcement workplace was employer warrantless search. In O'Connor v. Ortega (1987), the United States Supreme Court clarified the doctrine permitting public employers to conduct warrantless searches in the workplace. Using federal and state case law, this paper ana lyzes lower court interpretation and application of the Ortega doctrine re garding employer warrantless search in the law-enforcement workplace. The paper examines current lower court doctrine and discusses allowable warrantless search practices by law enforcement employers. This study concludes that lower courts, relying on a "balancing of competing inter ests" test between government and individual privacy, have found employer warrantless noncriminal searches permissible because of a diminished employee "expectation of privacy" in the public workplace. Further, in supplanting traditional Fourth Amendment warrant and probable-cause requirements with a reasonableness standard, the courts have expanded law enforcement employer search authority to include areas such as em ployee offices, desks, briefcases, lockers and government-issued vehicles.