Court ducks Constitutional privacy issue

In a rare unanimous decision, the Supreme Court held on January 19, 2011 that NASA's background inquiries of its contract employees regarding drug treatment or counseling and other negative "general behavior or conduct" of its contract employees were tailored to the government's interests in managing its workforce and therefore did not violate the employees' right to informational privacy. The Court ducked the issue of whether such information is actually protected by any Constitutional right to privacy, leaving that question open for another day. Nelson v. NASA.

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