Plaintiff is a police officer who sued over the workplace search of his cell phone (see City of Ontario v. Quon) after his wife grabbed it and turned it in claiming he was having sex with another officer. Qualified immunity was granted that the law was not clearly established. \u201cHere, we need not address whether it was proper for the district court to apply O’Connor to assess Lazar’s claim through the workplace search frame. This is because Lazar fails to cite any \u2018directly on point precedent\u2019 that stands for the proposition that a government official-when presented with evidence of an employee’s potential workplace misconduct-violates that employee’s Fourth Amendment rights by conducting a search of the employee’s personal cell phone for further evidence of the workplace misconduct. [\u00b6] In short, Lazar’s theory does not meet the \u2018demanding standard\u2019 of qualified immunity, which \u2018protects \u201call but the plainly incompetent or those who knowingly violate the law.\u201d\u2019 District of Columbia v. Wesby, 138 S. Ct. 577, 589 (2018) (quoting Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 341 (1986)).\u201d Lazar v. Knight, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 31868 (6th Cir. Oct. 7, 2020).*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plaintiff is a police officer who sued over the workplace search of his cell phone (see City of Ontario v. Quon) after his wife grabbed it and turned it in claiming he was having sex with another officer. Qualified immunity … Continue reading