Over two years after the Supreme Court granted review, it heard oral arguments in the first significant private employer workplace privacy case* to come before it. The L.A. Times’s report is here.
This is the analysis:
The justices’ queries and remarks suggested that they believe workers have the right to expect some privacy in their offices, but left open the question of whether the women who sued had suffered enough to win their case.
One exchange cited to bolster this analysis was this:
Chief Justice Ronald M. George appeared dubious of the company’s contention that an employee could never sue for loss of privacy if the worker was not the target of the surveillance. George cited a hypothetical of a camera placed in a company bathroom because of reports that people were engaging in lewd acts there.
If Justice George really asked this question, then he probably doesn’t know that this Larry Craig scenario is not allowed by statute. It’s the less extreme office “invasion” scenario that’s really in question here, because it isn’t covered by the statute.
I find it extremely dubious to base a prediction on an outcome (in this court especially) based on the oral arguments, though it did appear to give the right result in the Prop 8 case.
Click on the box to the right to see older posts about this case.
* Remember: Saunders was about invasion of privacy by a non-employer.
UPDATE:
Another quote:
Justice Joyce L. Kennard said the company had “a pretty big hurdle” in trying to argue that the case was not covered by a prior ruling that said employees in an office had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Apparently, Justice Kennard is not finding the distinction between an outside party invading privacy in someone’s office and the employer who owns or controls and is responsible for the premises. I sure hope that if this right of privacy is created, which is, by the way, against the majority rule in the U.S. (not that that makes a difference in California), we get some clarity on how this meshes with other liabilities that occur in the workplace.
This has “mess” written all over it.
