The Department of Labor\u2019s subpoena duces tecum was reasonable in scope and within the agency\u2019s authority. United States DOL v. Smith, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243413 (D. Kan. Sep. 21, 2026):*<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\nTo quell any Fourth Amendment concerns regarding unreasonable searches and seizures, administrative subpoenas, while not subject to probable cause, must be “sufficiently limited in scope, relevant in purpose, and specific in directive so that compliance will not be unreasonably burdensome.” Courts have termed this the “reasonable relevance” standard. “The standard for judging relevanc[e] in an investigatory proceeding is more relaxed than in an adjudicatory one.” “If the material [or testimony] requested ‘touches a matter under investigation,’ then relevancy is established.” Thus, relevancy is measured against the “general purposes of [the agency’s] investigation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here, the Petition and Declarations attached thereto show the subpoenaed documents meet this reasonable relevance standard. First, the subpoena contains specific document requests regarding ownership and structure of the business, tax returns, annual dollar volume of business, employee information, payroll and time records, wages, deductions, exemptions and cash payments. And, the requests are limited to the timeframe of May 1, 2024, to the present. Accordingly, the requests are not too indefinite because they are specific and limited in time and scope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Second, the documents are relevant to the DOL’s investigation because they seek information to determine whether Respondent would be subject to the FLSA, such as ownership documentation and information regarding total dollar volume of sales and volume of goods purchased or received. The subpoenaed documents also seek information about employees, payroll, wages and hours worked to determine if Respondent is meeting FLSA obligations including payment of a minimum wage for all hours worked and payment of a premium rate for hours worked over forty in a workweek. Thus, the reasonable relevant standard is met.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Labor\u2019s subpoena duces tecum was reasonable in scope and within the agency\u2019s authority. United States DOL v. Smith, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 243413 (D. Kan. Sep. 21, 2026):*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-administrative-search","category-subpoenas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65089"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65090,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65089\/revisions\/65090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}