CA7: MHSR demand of miners’ medical records was reasonable under Fourth Amendment

The Mine Safety & Health Review Commission sought personnel and medical records of mine workers. Mines are clearly regulated industries. The record demands were within the power of the agency granted by Congress. Viewing them as administrative subpoenas, the court finds the subpoenas reasonable under the Fourth Amendment as to the miners’ privacy and the companies. Big Ridge, Inc. v. Fed. Mine Safety & Health Review Comm’n, 715 F.3d 631 (7th Cir. 2013):

B. Fourth Amendment

Petitioners also challenge the record demands on Fourth Amendment grounds. The mine operators argue that the demands violate their right to be free from warrantless searches, seeking to distinguish these demands from the warrantless mine inspections permitted under Donovan v. Dewey, 452 U.S. 594 (1981). The miners argue that the demands invade their personal privacy. Although the mine operators have framed the issue primarily in terms of warrantless searches, we conclude that the record demands are best understood, in constitutional terms, as administrative subpoenas. The document demands do not violate mine operators’ Fourth Amendment rights because they are limited in scope and reasonably necessary to keep mines safe. The demands also do not violate miners’ Fourth Amendment rights because MSHA is legally constrained (and took precautionary measures) to keep miners’ medical information confidential. Miners’ interest in keeping their private information out of the wrong hands is outweighed by the government’s interest in MSHA’s purpose — miner safety and health.

1. Mine Operators
Petitioners argue that the record demands here are warrantless searches and prohibited by the Fourth Amendment. A government agency typically must secure a warrant before conducting a search of commercial premises or a business. See v. City of Seattle, 387 U.S. 541 (1967). A warrant is not always necessary, though, to search a business operating in a pervasively regulated industry because businesses in those industries have lower expectations of privacy. New York v. Burger, 482 U.S. 691, 702 (1987) (in closely regulated industries, “where the privacy interests of the owner are weakened and the government interests in regulating particular business are concomitantly heightened, a warrantless inspection of commercial premises may well be reasonable within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment”); United States v. Biswell, 406 U.S. 311 (1972); Colonnade Catering Corp. v. United States, 397 U.S. 72 (1970).

In Donovan v. Dewey, the Supreme Court held that mining falls into this category — it is so pervasively regulated that it should be excepted from the warrant requirement for the purposes of regulating mine safety. The Court observed that the 1977 Mine Safety Act regulated “industrial activity with a notorious history of Donovan is highly instructive but does not fully answer the Fourth Amendment question here, for Donovan concerned physical safety inspections of mines, not demands for production of medical and personnel files in mine custody. While Donovan found that the mining industry is sufficiently regulated to justify an exception from the warrant requirement, the fact that these document demands occur in the context of a pervasively regulated industry does not end the inquiry.

Warrantless searches of pervasively regulated industries must still be reasonable. Burger, 482 U.S. at 702. In determining whether a warrantless search of a closely-regulated enterprise pursuant to a regulatory scheme is reasonable, the Supreme Court has taught that such a search is reasonable if it satisfies three elements: the government has a substantial interest in the regulatory scheme prompting the search, a warrantless search is necessary to accomplish the goals of the regulatory scheme, and the regulatory scheme provides enough certainty and regularity to put business operators on notice and to limit individual agent discretion. See Burger, 482 U.S. at 701-03.

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Although the parties have briefed the issue primarily in terms of warrantless searches, the distinct differences between the document demands here and unannounced physical inspections, as in Donovan or Burger, persuade us that the Fourth Amendment issues are better understood in terms of the law applicable to administrative subpoenas. In essence, what section 50.41 permits is not an intrusion in which government inspectors themselves open file cabinets and examine computer hard drives, but rather an administrative subpoena that requires mine operators to allow MSHA inspectors to review and keep copies of the records. The record demands meet the Fourth Amendment requirements for administrative subpoenas.