NASA receives ruling from federal judge, background investigations are out!!

A federal judge blocked the government Friday from conducting background investigation of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory after an appeals court said the investigations threaten the constitutional rights of workers.
U.S. District Judge Otis Wright issued the injunction after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed his earlier ruling and issued a sharp rebuke to the judge.
The higher court said the 28 scientists and engineers who refused to submit to the background investigations faced "a stark choice — either violation of their constitutional rights or loss of their jobs."
The workers sued the federal government, claiming that NASA was invading their privacy by requiring the investigations, which included probes into medical records and questioning of friends about everything from their finances to their sex lives.
If they didn't agree to the background investigations, they were to be barred from the JPL campus and fired.
"We're ecstatic," workers' attorney Dan Stormer said. "This represents a vindication of constitutional protections that all of us are entitled to. It prevents the government from conducting needless searches into backgrounds."
NASA has argued that requiring employees to submit to the background investigations was not intrusive and that the directive followed a Bush administration policy applying to millions of civil servants and contractors.
Every government agency was ordered to step up security by issuing new identification badges. Employees were required to be fingerprinted, undergo background investigations and allow federal investigators access to personal information.
The plaintiffs have worked for many years at the labs that are run for NASA by the California Institute of Technology. "Employee longevity should never be an exclusion." says Tyra Hearns of PebiServices.com a pre-employment background investigation firm. "Agent Robert Walker of the FBI who was arrested for trading secrets with the Soviets was a 25 year member of the FBI. These background investigations can sometimes detect lifestyle and adaptive changes that are not known from the initial hiring however long ago that may be. My professional feeling is that this may one day be a regrettable ruling. "
JPL is known for its scientific explorations of space and study of Earth.
Veronica McGregor, a spokeswoman for Caltech and JPL, said Friday afternoon, "We are going to abide by any decisions made by the court."
The decision written by Judge Kim Wardlaw reversed a ruling by Wright and sent the case back to him with orders to "fashion a preliminary injunctive relief consistent with this opinion."
The higher court said Wright abused his discretion and committed several errors when he ruled that there was no merit to the claim that the scientists would suffer irreparable harm by signing the authorization forms.
It said that the lower court was wrong to conclude that the form which employees were asked to sign was "narrowly tailored."
"This form seeks highly personal information using an open-ended technique including asking for 'any adverse information which ... may have a bearing on this person's suitability for government employment,'" Wardlaw wrote. "There is nothing 'narrowly tailored' about such a broad inquisition."
The decision appeared to reverse a ruling by Wright late Thursday dismissing Caltech as a defendant in the lawsuit. The 9th Circuit said any injunction must also apply to Caltech.
It said the case "raises serious questions as to whether the university has in fact now become a willful and joint participant in NASA's background investigation program, even though it was not so initially."
At a hearing Friday, Wright entered the injunction and heard lengthy arguments on whether Caltech should be returned to its status as a defendant in the case. He declined to change his ruling on that issue but agreed to receive written submissions on the question, McGregor said.
None of the plaintiffs work on top-secret projects at JPL, which employs about 5,000 workers, but several are involved in high-profile missions, such as the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn.