Court Says NASA Background Checks On Low-Risk Employees OK
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena can continue.
The high court on Wednesday overturned a lower court decision that had stopped the space agency's investigations of the contract workers.
The workers claimed NASA was invading their privacy by requiring the investigations, which included probes into medical records and questioning of friends about everything from their finances to their sex lives.
If they didn't agree to the checks, the contract employees were to be barred from the laboratory grounds and fired.
Lower courts said the questions threatened the constitutional rights of workers. But Justice Samuel Alito says the government's interests as "employer and proprietor," and the rules against unauthorized disclosure of the information, outweigh the privacy concerns.
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