Court Opinion

ID: 9858821
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:48:19.505821+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:56:39.505165
License: Public Domain

UHLENHOPP, Justice
(concurring specially).
As I understand the court’s view it is that a polygraph test is not sufficiently work-related to the functions of a mechanic to render his refusal to take such a test ground for dismissal under the civil service statute, section 400.19, The Code 1979. The court does not include firemen and policemen in its ruling.
This court holds that polygraph test-results have not been shown to be sufficiently reliable to be admissible in evidence in court over objection. State v. Conner, 241 N.W.2d 447, 459 (Iowa 1976). Literature on the subject supports that holding. E. g., Craver, The Inquisitorial Process in Private Employment, 63 Cornell L.Rev. 1, 40 (1977). This being so, I would simply rest the present decision on the undemonstrated re*583liability of polygraph tests, and hold that civil service employees cannot be discharged for refusal to take such tests. I would hold .in abeyance the question of the effect of prior agreements to take polygraph tests.
Applying instead the “work related” basis, as the court does, subjects not only firemen and policemen but also a number of other employees to enforceable demands for polygraph tests. Yet the fireman or other employee in question may not be refusing the test because he is guilty, but because he is innocent and, in common with writers in the field, lacks confidence in polygraph tests and does not want to stake his future on them.
Since the results of polygraph tests cannot be used in court over objection, presumably civil service- employers will not use the results as grounds for discharging employees and thus force employees to appeal to the courts. Hence we have the unanswered question, what use will be made of test results? If the polygraph operator says the employee failed the test, will the “failure” be noted on the employee’s record and constitute an obstacle to advancement or to employment elsewhere? In any event, will word circulate through the department that the employee “failed the test”? Will the failure constitute a long-time black mark against the employee — notwithstanding the undemonstrated reliability of polygraph testing?
I would thus base the reversal on the same ground on which we refuse to admit polygraph-test results into evidence over objection: undemonstrated reliability. This obviates consideration of Fourth and Fifth Amendment implications. See Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 764, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 1832, 16 L.Ed.2d 908, 916 (1966) (“Some tests seemingly directed to obtain ‘physical evidence,’ for example, lie detector tests measuring changes in bodily function during interrogation, may actually be directed to eliciting responses which are essentially testimonial. To compel a person to submit to testing in which an effort will be. made to determine his guilt or innocence on the basis of physiological responses, whether willed or not, is to evoke the spirit and history of the Fifth Amendment.”); Hermann, Privacy, The Prospective Employee, and Employment Testing: The Need to Restrict Polygraph and Personality Testing, 47 Wash.L.Rev. 73, 135 (1971).
McCORMICK, J., joins this special concurrence.