Court Rejects Louisiana Firefighters’ Claim That Fingerprinting is Unconstitutional

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has ruled that a fire department does not violate the Fourth Amendment by requiring all personnel to submit to fingerprinting. Five firefighters with the East Bank Consolidated Special Service Fire Protection District filed suit last year, objecting to the district’s plan to use fingerprinting technology for firefighters to clock in and out of work.

The firefighters alleged that the district’s fingerprinting plan violated their Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights, causing them mental anguish, embarrassment, humiliation, shock and mortification. They named the fire district, Jefferson Parrish President Cynthia Lee Sheng, and the district’s past and current fire chiefs.

In granting the fire district’s motion to dismiss, Judge Wendy B. Vitter ruled as follows:

• To satisfy their burden in sufficiently stating a Fourth Amendment claim, Plaintiffs … establish…  (1) that a search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment occurred and (2) that such search or seizure was unreasonable.
• The Supreme Court has recognized two different tests for determining whether a Fourth Amendment search has occurred. In Katz v. United States, the Supreme Court held that “[a] ‘search’ occurs when an expectation of privacy that society is prepared to consider reasonable is infringed.”
• Second is the more recent Jones “common-law trespassory” test. In United States v. Jones, the Supreme Court “revived” a property approach to the question of whether a search has occurred.
• Under the Jones test, a search occurs where there is (1) a trespass or physical intrusion “conjoined” with (2) “an attempt to find something or obtain information.”  
• Both elements must be met to constitute a Fourth Amendment search
• [W]hile the Supreme Court’s decisions in this area are less than clear, most lower courts to have considered whether fingerprinting constitutes a search have answered in the negative.
• Applying the Katz test, those courts have held that a person lacks an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy in their own fingerprints regardless of whether they might have had a subjective expectation of privacy because they knowingly expose their fingerprints to the public.
• Several courts have also noted the minimally intrusive nature of fingerprinting as compared with the taking of blood and urine.
• Given the widespread adoption of fingerprinting in modern society, Plaintiffs have not sufficiently alleged that they have a privacy interest in their fingerprints that “society is prepared to recognize as ‘reasonable.'”
• The Court, relying upon guidance from the Supreme Court, thus finds that Plaintiffs have not established that fingerprinting constitutes a search under the Katz “reasonable expectation of privacy” test.
• While fingerprinting may not involve an invasion of an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy sufficient to satisfy Katz, the Court next addresses whether fingerprinting may constitute a search under the Jones trespassory test.
• Even though fingerprinting may not amount to a search under Katz, the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones directs that the Court classify the fingerprinting at issue as a Fourth Amendment search.
• Even if Plaintiffs have established that mandatory fingerprinting amounts to a search, …. “[t]he Fourth Amendment does not proscribe all search and seizures, but only those that are unreasonable.”
• Therefore, “the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search is ‘reasonableness.'”
• A determination of what is reasonable “depends upon all of the circumstances surrounding the search or seizure and the nature of the search or seizure itself.”
• The warrant requirement is not absolute.
• [T]he Supreme Court has upheld several different exceptions to the warrant requirement.
• [O]ne such exception exists where “special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable.”
• The Supreme Court has applied the “special needs” exception to uphold, inter alia, the suspicionless drug testing of railroad employees, public school student-athletes, and federal customs officers who carry arms or are involved in drug interdiction, cavity searches of prison inmates, searches of probationer’s homes, and the “legitimate work-related, noninvestigatory intrusions” into a public employee’s office.
• Accepting as true Plaintiffs’ allegations, the fingerprinting took place as part of a newly implemented time management system approved by the Jefferson Parish Council in order to accurately assess when civil service Fire Department employees have clocked in and out for their work period, not for any law enforcement reason.
• As such, the fingerprinting at issue here is subject to the same standard of reasonableness as in O’Connor.
• In determining reasonableness and whether the “special needs” exception applies, the Court considers several factors including “the scope of the particular intrusion, the manner in which it is conducted, the justification for initiating it and the place in which it is conducted.”
• Put differently, a search must be justified both at its inception (the “why”) and in its scope (the “how”). While no factor is wholly dispositive, “[t]he fact that an intrusion is negligible is of central relevance to determining reasonableness.”
• In the employment context, “when the government conducts a search in its capacity as employer . . . the relevant question is whether that intrusion upon privacy is one that a reasonable employer might engage in.”
• Ultimately, the Court must weigh the intrusiveness of fingerprinting on the Plaintiffs’ privacy interests against the Defendants’ legitimate workplace interests.
• Again, accepting the Plaintiffs’ factual allegations, the Court determines that the legal factors weigh in favor of finding Defendants’ fingerprinting policy to be reasonable under the circumstances.
• Of “central relevance” to this conclusion is the minimal scope of the particular intrusion.
• While the fingerprinting in this case likely constituted a search under Jones, the search did not run afoul of the Fourth Amendment.
• The scope of the particular intrusion and the manner in which it was collected in this case were minimal.
• The timekeeping justification for the intrusion constitutes a legitimate work-related, noninvestigatory intrusion that satisfies the reasonableness standard in terms of its inception and scope.
• Therefore, the fingerprinting of Plaintiffs was not an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
• Because the Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate an underlying constitutional violation, their § 1983 Monell claims against the Defendants necessarily fail.
• Likewise, the Plaintiffs’ Louisiana constitutional claims also fail.

Here is a copy of the decision: