Right to Privacy in Your Desk

by KYW's Amy Feldman

Here’s a word to the wise.  If you’re going to commit armed robbery, don’t leave the gun you used in your desk drawer at work.  Turns out, your employer has a right to check without asking you as an actual armed robber in Florida found out. 

But even if you don’t leave a gun but, say, your personal papers, pictures, or other items that are none of your employer’s (or the police’s) business, does your employer have a right to paw through your desk?
 
If you work for a private employer, you should know that you do not have a right to privacy in your desk—and when I say “your desk” I mean the desk that your employer has provided for you to use.  Even if you keep personal papers or other information, do not expect privacy.  That may be different if you get a locker and are given the only key to that locker—but in cases in which the employer has searched a desk and found the contraband it was looking for, employees have not been able to show that the employer had no right to look for what it found.  As an employee, you are advised to leave personal effects, and of course the effects of those you’ve robbed and the gun you used to rob them, at home.