Proving Your Privacy Was Violated at Work
Find out whether you can sue your employer for invasion of privacy
If you believe that you have been subject to an unreasonable invasion of your privacy at work, your most powerful weapon may be to file a lawsuit against your employer. The U.S. Constitution and your state's constitution and statutes may provide you with some privacy protections at work, but often it will be up to the courts to determine whether an employer's actions are legal in a given context.
When judges evaluate whether a particular workplace search or surveillance action is legal, they must balance two competing concerns: the employer's justification for taking the action with the worker's reasonable expectations of privacy.
As such, your best argument will be that you legitimately expected -- based on your employer's policies and past practices, and common sense -- that the employer would not search certain areas or take certain actions. For example, you may have a high expectation of privacy in the employee restroom or a changing area, particularly if your employer has not warned workers that these areas might be monitored.
Your argument will be stronger if you can show that, in the process of collecting information on you, your employer engaged in one or more of the following practices.
Deception. For example, your employer asked you to submit to a routine medical examination, but mentioned nothing about a drug test. However, the urine sample you gave to the examining physician was analyzed for drug traces, and, because drugs were found in your urine, you were fired.
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