Service Mach. & Shipbuilding Corp. v. Edwards
| Decision Date | 13 February 1979 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 78-1556. |
| Citation | 466 F. Supp. 1200 |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Western District of Louisiana |
| Parties | SERVICE MACHINE & SHIPBUILDING CORP. et al. v. Edwin W. EDWARDS et al. |
M. David Gelfand, R. James Kellogg, New Orleans, La., for Forest Reubin and Southern Mut. Help Ass'n Andrew Reed, Aycock, Horne, Caldwell, Coleman & Duncan, Morgan City, La., for Service Mach. & Shipbuilding Corp.
Bernard E. Boudreaux, Jr., Bauer, Darnall, McNulty & Boudreaux, Franklin, La., for Chester C. Baudoin, Sheriff, St. Mary Parish.
Anthony J. Guarisco, Jr., Morgan City, La., for Edwin Edwards, Governor of Louisiana.
Michael J. Aloise, Jr., Morgan City, La., for Robert Stoute, Identification officer for St. Mary Parish.
Edward M. Leonard, Jr., Morgan City, La., for St. Mary Parish Police Jury.
J. Marvin Montgomery, Asst. Atty. Gen., Baton Rouge, La., for William J. Guste, Jr., Atty. Gen., State of La.
Plaintiffs sued to declare invalid and enjoin enforcement of a workers' registration ordinance enacted by the St. Mary Parish Police Jury. Plaintiff Service Machine & Shipbuilding Corporation is an employer and plaintiff Forest Reubin is a potential employee.
Pursuant to authority granted by a state enabling act,1 the St. Mary Parish Police Jury enacted a worker registration ordinance,2 which is the subject of the constitutional attack in this suit.
During the past 10 years, St. Mary Parish has experienced both the advantages and disadvantages of rapid population growth which resulted from the development of the offshore oil and gas industry. The St. Mary Parish Police Jury believed that the large number of transient workers attracted to this labor-hungry industry contributed significantly to its crime problems. The members of the police jury viewed the crime rate of their parish as higher than the crime rate of neighboring parishes.3
In an attempt to reduce its crime rate, the St. Mary Parish Police Jury enacted Ordinance 837.
Ordinance 837 mandates that employers require certain workers to obtain a worker's registration card as a condition of employment. In order to obtain a registration card, the job applicant must register with a licensed franchisee, complete a questionnaire, be fingerprinted and photographed and pay up to $10 as a registration fee. The job applicants subject to the ordinance are: 1) all persons who travel into the parish to seek employment and 2) all current workers who seek to change employment.
The ordinance apparently does not require registration and custody of a registration card by an individual: 1) who is currently employed in St. Mary Parish and does not seek to change his employment; 2) who remains unemployed; 3) who was a resident of St. Mary Parish and unemployed on the effective date of the ordinance and who seeks to obtain employment in St. Mary Parish for the first time; and 4) who is self-employed.
Plaintiffs urge that the ordinance impermissibly infringes on rights secured under the United States Constitution in the following respects: 1) violates the commerce clause (Article 1, § 8); 2) represents an impermissible levy of duties on imports or exports (Article 1, § 10); 3) violates plaintiffs' right to travel guaranteed by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment and other provisions of the United States Constitution; 4) violates plaintiffs' right of privacy guaranteed by the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment and other provisions of the United States Constitution; 5) violates rights guaranteed to plaintiff Reubin and other members of his class by the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment; 6) violates guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure granted by the fourth amendment; 7) violates an employee's fifth amendment right not to be compelled to be a witness against himself.
Plaintiff Reubin contends that the mandated disclosure of fingerprints, photographs, addresses for the past five years, names and addresses of relatives and other information required on the application deprives plaintiff of privacy guaranteed to him by the United States Constitution.
The threshold question to be considered is whether the information which the ordinance requires plaintiff to disclose is the type information which is within the zone of privacy protected by the due process clause of the Constitution.
The two aspects of the protected right to privacy were set forth by the Supreme Court in Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589, 598-600, 97 S.Ct. 869, 876, 51 L.Ed.2d 64 (1977) as follows:
The cases sometimes characterized as protecting "privacy" have in fact involved at least two different kinds of interests. One is the individual interest in avoiding disclosure of personal matters, and another is the interest in independence in making certain kinds of important decisions. (footnotes deleted).
Plaintiffs' complaints focus on the first aspect of the right to privacy — avoiding disclosure of personal matters.4
The landmark cases dealing with the confidentiality branch of the right of privacy have involved dissemination of information which in every sense is much more sensitive and personal than the information required to be divulged by Ordinance 837.5
The Supreme Court in Paul v. Davis,6 held that a police official had no liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for disseminating information relating to plaintiff's arrest record for shoplifting. The Court seemed to hold that the individual's right to privacy was not violated by the dissemination of this type information.7
In Thom v. New York Stock Exchange, 306 F.Supp. 1002 (S.D. N.Y. 1969), aff'd per curiam sub nom. Miller v. New York Stock Exchange, 425 F.2d 1074 (2d Cir. 1970), the Second Circuit affirmed the district court dismissal of an action challenging a New York statute that required the fingerprinting of all employees of the New York Stock Exchange. The district court stated:
The submission of one's fingerprints is no more an invasion of privacy than the submission of one's photograph or signature to a prospective employer, which the Stock Exchange rules still require. As the Supreme Court in Davis observed `Fingerprinting involves none of the probing into an individual's private life and thoughts that marks an interrogation or search.' The actual inconvenience is minor; the claimed indignity, nonexistent; detention, there is none; nor unlawful search; nor unlawful seizure.
306 F.Supp. 1009 (footnotes omitted).8
I conclude that none of the information required to be divulged by the ordinance can be characterized as sensitive personal information. The vast bulk of the information — name, address, identity of close relatives — is divulged numerous times during the course of the average individual's lifetime. This information is normally divulged when one enters primary school, high school and college; when one is married and on many employment applications.
Plaintiff Reubin argues that a job applicant, by divulging prior addresses, is subject to possible future embarrassment if the job applicant has a criminal record or has been confined in a mental institution. Plaintiff also argues that the address of a parent or other relative may reflect confinement in a prison or mental institution. Plaintiff also argues that the completed application may reveal that: 1) the applicant is illegitimate (if the father's identity is unknown or if the father's name is different from that of the mother), or 2) that the applicant and his wife are separated (if the response on the application reflects an address which is different for the wife than the applicant).
The court, in Plante,9 considered a similar question when it was argued that compliance with the financial disclosure statute could reveal memberships, associations and beliefs. The court disposed of this argument as follows:
Although in some particular situations, rigorous application of the Amendment might implicate first amendment freedoms, when considering the Amendment on its face, this threat is too remote to raise the issue.
I conclude that the information required to be divulged by Ordinance 837 is not the sensitive, personal type information entitled to protection under the Constitution.
In the event, however, that a reviewing court should disagree with my conclusion, it is in order that I make further findings with respect to the scrutiny which should be applied to plaintiffs' claims.
In view of the minimal anticipated impact which the required disclosure will have on the plaintiffs, I conclude that the most stringent review test which should be applied to this claim is the intermediate test applied in Plante.10
The constitutionality of the amendment will be determined by comparing the interests it serves with those it hinders.
The parish police jury reasoned that: 1) St. Mary Parish had a serious crime problem. I conclude that the governing body was justified in its belief.11 2) The large transient population contributed to the crime problem. Hard evidence on this question is difficult to produce. I am unable to characterize as unreasonable the belief of the governing body that the large influx of young, highly mobile, unskilled men contributed to the parish's crime problem. 3) The nature and quantity of the labor force required by the oil industry attracted an inordinate number of fugitives from other jurisdictions who committed a disproportionate amount of crime in relation to the population in general.12
The parties stipulated that the purpose of the ordinance was to "reduce the rate of crime in the parish by deterring suspects who are wanted in other jurisdictions from moving into the parish to work and to assist in the detection of persons who have committed crimes in the parish."13
The parish officials...
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Service Mach. & Shipbuilding Corp. v. Edwards
...below, the district court upheld the ordinance and refused to enjoin the registration system the ordinance established. 466 F.Supp. 1200 (W.D.La.1979). A panel of this court granted an injunction pending appeal, requiring that all registration under the system cease, and this expedited appe......
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Wallace v. Town of Palm Beach
...will be deterred from moving into Palm Beach because of his reluctance to be fingerprinted. See, Service Machine & Shipbuilding Corp. v. Edwards, 466 F.Supp. 1200, 1205 (W.D.La.1979), rev'd, 617 F.2d 70 (5th Cir. 1980), aff'd, 449 U.S. 913, 101 S.Ct. 310, 66 L.Ed.2d 142 (1980). The Town's s......