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An interesting decision out of New York may have some implications for federal sector cases. The New York Department of Corrections had a rule requiring employees to submit a brief doctor's diagnosis after each sick leave absence. A federal district court ruled that this violates the ADA's prohibition on certain medical inquiries. The specific section of the law is 42 USC 12112(d), which prohibits employers from "making inquiries of an employee as to whether such employee is an individual with a disability or as to the nature or severity of the disability, unless such examination or inquiry is shown to be job related and consistent with business necessity." The Court ruled that the requirement for a medical diagnosis after a brief absence would be likely to cause employees to reveal a disability or a perceived disability and that there was no justification for this policy.

The 10" Circuit clarified an important point about the protection for filing an American's with Disabilities Act complaint in Selenke v Medical Imaging of Colorado, 248 F. 3d 1249 (10th Cir. 2001). The employer argued that the employee was not protected from reprisal for filing an ADA complaint because she was not actually disabled. The Court rejected this argument, saying that employees are protected from reprisal for filing an ADA complaint even if they are not disabled so long as they have an honest belief that they suffer from a disability.

A public employee in Oklahoma was prosecuted for possession of child pornography images on his office computer. The employee argued that the search of his computer violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free from a warrant-less search. The Court ruled that the employee had no reasonable expectation of privacy in his office computer because of the employer's written policy that it reserves the right to access anything on the computers and because of the opening message flashed on the screen to the effect that the contents of the office computers were subject to search. United States v Angevine, 40 GERR 279 (1 0th Cir. 2002).