O'Connor v. Ortega

Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens, entered a dissenting opinion. They agreed that the search of Ortega's office and seizure of his personal effects was a patent violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. Ortega had an expectation of privacy in his office. His office became the target of a search by hospital officials whose purpose was to investigate. The hospital officials did not complete the inventory of state property, but rather intruded into Ortega's files and desk in order to locate materials supporting the charges against him. The dissenting justices determined that there was no `special need' to neglect obtaining a warrant and fulfilling the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment. Since the hospital officials were investigating possible improprieties, they could have addressed their concerns to a magistrate and obtained the appropriate search warrant. Officials would have been forced to examine and express their reasons for the search and to identify those items they were seeking, preventing the general and unauthorized intrusion into Dr. Ortega's desk and file cabinets. Blackmun, Brennan, Marshall, and Stevens stated that by overlooking the probable cause requirement and negating the need to obtain a warrant, and replacing these with some other standard of reasonableness, the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment were undermined and weakened.