The respondent, Dr. Magno Ortega, a physician and psychiatrist, was an employee of a state hospital and had primary responsibility for training physicians in the psychiatric residency program. Hospital officials, including the executive director of the hospital, Dr. Dennis O'Connor, became concerned about possible improprieties in Dr. Ortega's management of the program, particularly with respect to his acquisition of a computer and charges against him concerning sexual harassment of female hospital employees and inappropriate disciplinary action against a resident. In 1981, while Dr. Ortega was on administrative leave pending investigation of the charges, hospital officials, allegedly to inventory and secure state property, searched his office and seized personal items from his desk and file cabinets that were used in administrative proceedings resulting in his discharge. No formal inventory of property in the office was ever made, and all the other papers in the office were merely placed in boxes for storage.
Dr. Ortega filed an action against the hospital officials under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, alleging that the search of his office violated the Fourth Amendment. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court granted judgment for the hospital, concluding that the search was proper because there was a need to secure state property in the office. Affirming in part, reversing in part, and remanding the case, the court of appeals concluded that Dr. Ortega had a reasonable expectation of privacy in his office and that the search violated the Fourth Amendment. The court held that the record justified a grant of partial summary judgment for him on the issue of liability for the search, and it remanded the case to the district court for a determination of damages. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.] O'CONNOR, J.... ...
We accept the conclusion of the Court of Appeals that Dr. Ortega had a reasonable expectation of privacy at least in his desk and file cabinets.... In our view, requiring an employer to obtain a warrant whenever the employer wished to enter an employee's office, desk, or file cabinets for a work-related purpose would seriously disrupt the routine conduct of business and would be unduly burdensome....
The governmental interest justifying work-related intrusions by public employers is the efficient and proper operation of the workplace. Government agencies provide myriad services to the public, and the work of these agencies would suffer if employers were required to have probable cause before they entered an employee's desk for the purpose of finding a file or piece of office correspondence. Indeed, it is difficult to give the concept of probable cause, rooted as it is in the criminal investigatory context, much meaning when the purpose of a search is to retrieve a file for work-related reasons. Similarly, the concept of probable cause has little meaning for a routine inventory conducted by public employers for the purpose of securing state property....
To ensure the efficient and proper operation of the agency, therefore, public employers must be given wide latitude to enter employee offices for workrelated, non-investigatory reasons. We come to a similar conclusion for searches conducted pursuant to an investigation of workrelated employee misconduct. Even when employers conduct an investigation, they have an interest substantially different from "the normal need for law enforcement." New Jersey v. T.L.O., supra, 469 U.S. at 351, 105 S. Ct., at 748 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in judgment). Public employers have an interest in ensuring that their agencies operate in an effective and efficient manner, and the work of these agencies inevitably suffers from the inefficiency, incompetence, mismanagement, or other work-related misfeasance of its employees.
Indeed, in many cases, public employees are entrusted with tremendous responsibility, and the consequences of their misconduct or incompetence to both the agency and the public interest can be severe. In contrast to law enforcement officials, therefore, public employers are not enforcers of the criminal law; instead, public employers have a direct and overriding interest in ensuring that the work of the agency is conducted in a proper and efficient manner. In our view, therefore, a probable cause requirement for searches of the type at issue here would impose intolerable burdens on public employers.
The delay in correcting the employee misconduct caused by the need for probable cause rather than reasonable suspicion will be translated into tangible and often irreparable damage to the agency's work, and ultimately to the public interest.... Balanced against the substantial government interests in the efficient and proper operation of the workplace are the privacy interests of government employees in their place of work which, while not insubstantial, are far less than those found at home or in some other contexts. As with the building inspections at Camara, the employer intrusions at issue here "involve a relatively limited invasion" of employee privacy. 387 U.S., at 537, 87 S.Ct., at 1735.
Government offices are provided to employees for the sole purpose of facilitating the work of an agency. The employee may avoid exposing personal belongings at work by simply leaving them at home. In sum, we conclude that the "special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement make the ... probable-cause requirement impracticable," 469 U.S., at 351, 105 S.Ct., at 748 (BLACKMUN, J., concurring in judgment), for legitimate workrelated, noninvestigatory intrusions as well as investigations of work-related misconduct. A standard of reasonableness will neither unduly burden the efforts of government employers to ensure the efficient and proper operation of the workplace, nor authorize arbitrary intrusions upon the privacy of public employees.
We hold, therefore, that public employer intrusions on the constitutionally protected privacy interests of government employees for noninvestigatory, work-related purposes, as well as for investigations of work-related misconduct, should be judged by the standard of reasonableness under all circumstances. Under this reasonableness standard, both the inception and the scope of the intrusion must be reasonable: "Determining the reasonableness of any search involves a twofold inquiry: first, one must consider ‘whether the.... action was justified at its inception.' Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. [1], at 20 [88 S.Ct. 1868, 1879, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968)]; second, one must determine whether the search as actually conducted ‘was reasonable related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place,' ibid." New Jersey v. T.L.O., supra, at 341,105 S.Ct., at 742-743.
Ordinarily, a search of an employee's office by a supervisor will be "justified at its inception" when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the employee is guilty of work-related misconduct, or that the search is necessary for a noninvestigatory work-related purpose such as to retrieve a needed file....
The search will be permissible in its scope when "the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of ... the nature of the [misconduct]." 469 U.S., at 342. In the procedural posture of this case, we do not attempt to determine whether the search of Dr. Ortega's office and the seizure of his personal belongings satisfy the standard of reasonableness we have articulated in this case. No evidentiary hearing was held in this case because the District Court acted on crossmotions for summary judgment, and granted petitioners summary judgment. The Court of Appeals, on the other hand, concluded that the record in this case justified granting partial summary judgment on liability to Dr. Ortega. We believe that both the District Court and the Court of Appeals were in error because summary judgment was inappropriate.... ...
A search to secure state property is valid as long as petitioners had a reasonable belief that there was government property in Dr. Ortega's office which needed to be secured, and the scope of the intrusion was itself reasonable in light of this justification. Indeed, petitioners have put forward evidence that they had such a reasonable belief; at the time of the search, petitioners knew that Dr. Ortega had removed the computer from the Hospital. The removal of the computer-together with the allegations of mismanagement of the residency program and sexual harassment-may have made the search reasonable at its inception under the standard we have put forth in this case. As with the District Court order, therefore, the Court of Appeals conclusion that summary judgment was appropriate cannot stand.
On remand, therefore, the District Court must determine the justification for the search and seizure, and evaluate the reasonableness of both the inception of the search and its scope. Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. JUSTICE SCALIA, Concurring in the judgment. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, with whom JUSTICE BRENNAN, JUSTICE MARSHALL, and JUSTICE STEVENS join, Dissenting...
The facts of this case are simple and straightforward. Dr. Ortega had an expectation of privacy in his office, desk, and file cabinets, which were the target of a search by petitioners that can be characterized only as investigatory in nature. Because there was no "special need," see New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 351, 105 S.Ct. 733, 748, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985) (opinion concurring in judgment), to dispense with the warrant and probable-cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment, I would evaluate the search by applying this traditional standard. Under that standard, this search clearly violated Dr. Ortega's Fourth Amendment rights.
Case Questions
1. Did Dr. Ortega have a reasonable expectation of privacy, at least as to his desk and file cabinets?
2. Why didn't the Supreme Court require that the employer have a warrant based on probable cause to search an employee's desk and files when investigating work-related misconduct?
3. What did the Court decide in this case?