Court Opinion

ID: 9430898
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:30:50.981299+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:00.274306
License: Public Domain

Justice Scalia,
concurring in the judgment.
Although I share the judgment that this case must be reversed and remanded, I disagree with the reason for the reversal given by the plurality opinion, and with the standard it prescribes for the Fourth Amendment inquiry.
To address the latter point first: The plurality opinion instructs the lower courts that existence of Fourth Amendment protection for a public employee’s business office is to be assessed “on a case-by-case basis,” in light of whether the office is “so open to fellow employees or the public that no expectation of privacy is reasonable.” Ante, at 718. No clue is provided as to how open “so open” must be; much less *730is it suggested how police officers are to gather the facts necessary for this refined inquiry. As we observed in Oliver v. United States, 466 U. S. 170, 181 (1984), “[t]his Court repeatedly has acknowledged the difficulties created for courts, police, and citizens by an ad hoc, case-by-case definition of Fourth Amendment standards to be applied in differing factual circumstances.” Even if I did not disagree with the plurality as to what result the proper legal standard should produce in the case before us, I would object to the formulation of a standard so devoid of content that it produces rather than eliminates uncertainty in this field.
Whatever the plurality’s standard means, however, it must be wrong if it leads to the conclusion on the present facts that if Hospital officials had extensive “work-related reasons to enter Dr. Ortega’s office” no Fourth Amendment protection existed. Ante, at 718. It is privacy that is protected by the Fourth Amendment, not solitude. A man enjoys Fourth Amendment protection in his home, for example, even though his wife and children have the run of the place — and indeed, even though his landlord has the right to conduct unannounced inspections at any time. Similarly, in my view, one’s personal office is constitutionally protected against war-rantless intrusions by the police, even though employer and co-workers are not excluded. I think we decided as much many years ago. In Mancusi v. DeForte, 392 U. S. 364 (1968), we held that a union employee had Fourth Amendment rights with regard to an office at union headquarters that he shared with two other employees, even though we acknowledged that those other employees, their personal or business guests, and (implicitly) “union higher-ups” could enter the office. Id., at 369. Just as the secretary working for a corporation in an office frequently entered by the corporation’s other employees is protected against unreasonable searches of that office by the government, so also is the government secretary working in an office frequently entered by other government employees. There is no reason why this *731determination that a legitimate expectation of privacy exists should be affected by the fact that the government, rather than a private entity, is the employer. Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches by the government does not disappear merely because the government has the right to make reasonable intrusions in its capacity as employer.
I cannot agree, moreover, with the plurality’s view that the reasonableness of the expectation of privacy (and thus the existence of Fourth Amendment protection) changes “when an intrusion is by a supervisor rather than a law enforcement official.” Ante, at 717. The identity of the searcher (police v. employer) is relevant not to whether Fourth Amendment protections apply, but only to whether the search of a protected area is reasonable. Pursuant to traditional analysis the former question must be answered on a more “global” basis. Where, for example, a fireman enters a private dwelling in response to an alarm, we do not ask whether the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy (and hence Fourth Amendment protection) vis-a-vis firemen, but rather whether — given the fact that the Fourth Amendment covers private dwellings —intrusion for the purpose of extinguishing a fire is reasonable. Cf. Michigan v. Tyler, 436 U. S. 499, 509 (1978). A similar analysis is appropriate here.
I would hold, therefore, that the offices of government employees, and a fortiori the drawers and files within those offices, are covered by Fourth Amendment protections as a general matter. (The qualifier is necessary to cover such unusual situations as that in which the office is subject to unrestricted public access, so that it is “expose[d] to the public” and therefore “not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.” Katz v. United States, 389 U. S. 347, 351 (1967).) Since it is unquestioned that the office here was assigned to Dr. Ortega, and since no special circumstances are suggested that would call for an exception to the ordinary rule, I would *732agree with the District Court and the Court of Appeals that Fourth Amendment protections applied.
The case turns, therefore, on whether the Fourth Amendment was violated — i. e., whether the governmental intrusion was reasonable. It is here that the government’s status as employer, and the employment-related character of the search, become relevant. While as a general rule warrant-less searches are per se unreasonable, we have recognized exceptions when “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable . . . .” New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 351 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment). Such “special needs” are present in the context of government employment. The government, like any other employer, needs frequent and convenient access to its desks, offices, and file cabinets for work-related purposes. I would hold that government searches to retrieve work-related materials or to investigate violations of workplace rules — searches of the sort that are regarded as reasonable and normal in the private-employer context — do not violate the Fourth Amendment. Because the conflicting and incomplete evidence in the present case could not conceivably support summary judgment that the search did not have such a validating purpose, I agree with the plurality that the decision must be reversed and remanded.