Everyone has to comply with federal law, they just aren’t require to enforce it.
Not even close to applicable to the discussion at hand. That is a manager sharing with law enforcement a personal communication involving him. There’s a wide gulf between that and allowing law enforcement to search private records of the employee in question without a warrant.
Let’s change the story a bit. No text message, but police show up saying “we’re looking for the ax-murdering sonofabitch Bob. Can we look through his desk and see if he left any clues in there about where he might be hiding?” You’re saying there’s some problem with the employer saying, “Sure, go ahead, he sits right over there”? :dubious:
If police were never ever allowed to lie to the public, then maybe.
As it is, they could be lying to me, and just looking to try to find dirt on Bob, who mouthed off to an officer the other day, and now they are trying to find something to charge him with.
That’s why I would need a warrant.
Yes, the possibility exists that they’re lying. And you (or our hypothetical employer) are(/is) certainly free to say “no, get a warrant”. The important question, as it relates to AB450, is this: Do you think an employer who wanted to voluntarily consent to the LEO’s request deserves to be fined by the state of California?
Yes.
Having your options limited actually gives you freedom.
If you are being pressured to let ICE into your staff areas, or to take a look at your employment records, then they can be all like “Why won’t you voluntarily comply with our request? What do you have to hide?”. If not voluntarily responding to their request is an action that will put LEO suspicion an pressure on your, then it’s not really all that voluntary anymore. There are possible consequences for not volunteering that information.
With the law, they ask, and you say, “I’m sorry, Agent ICE, I’d love to comply, but the law says I cannot without a warrant. If you get a warrant, I will be more than happy to help you out in any way specified by that warrant.”
Plus, as I mentioned earlier, there are other mangers that may have access and technical ability to grant that access, but they may not be following the actual owners wishes by doing so. Making it illegal for anyone to grant access without a warrant preserves the owner’s privacy that can be abrogated by a careless or malicious manager.
I think that’s a radical view, and very likely to get squashed by the courts, but I appreciate your forthright answer. In the event that the courts actually uphold this sort of scheme, I look forward to helping my state legislators write all sorts of legislation limiting the cooperation our citizens will be allowed to give all sorts of federal agencies, bureaus, and commissions, departments, etc.
I think I understand your point, even though I disagree with it, but as an aside, this particular line came across as very Orwellian.
And well you should. If LEO’s have no warrants, they have no reason to bug you.
If they have a warrant, that’s a whole different thing.
Yeah, it does sound that way, until you realize that what you are doing is limiting your option in dealing with authority figures, and therefore, limiting their options in their ability to manipulate and control you.
“You are free to cooperate with the law enforcement officials that may want to ask you some questions.” has more orwellian implications to me.
I think that nobody is addressing the ownership of the information getting handed over without consent. I’m trying to put myself as the employee in the situation.
As I understand it, I have the right to privacy regarding the personal information I had to provide to be hired at my job. I am not giving them the consent for them to share that information with anyone. It isn’t theirs to give, right? It doesn’t have anything to do with the owner or what he wants to do, he legally can’t hand over my personal information. He could hand over anything else he wanted, but not my stuff.
That is the impression my lawyer gives me regarding my employees and my responsibilities and requirements to keep their personal information secure. Its like credit card information of my customers.
Maybe I’m wrong on that, but ICE having an actual warrant would make all of these problems go away.
I don’t know if you are legally correct here, but that is my ethical position as well.
I’ve never heard that before. Without a verifiable source, I’m inclined to believe you are probably mistaken. I would imagine that everything you turn over to your employer, from the job application you filled out and resume you sent in, to the I-9 form you filled out while onboarding, all are the property of your employer.
OTOH, if one day he tried to auction off your car sitting on his parking lot, or the coat you have slung over the back of our chair, I suspect the law would prevent him from doing so.
I’d assume that if I started selling my employees SSN# on the dark web, the law may have something to say about that as well.
The personal information of an employee is entrusted to the employer, as it is needed to pay them and to withhold taxes appropriately, but it is not OWNED by the employer.
How can you claim there is a right to privacy of your employee information when it’s turned over to the IRS? How does the IRS have a right to that information, but ICE needs a warrant?
The fact is, neither needs a warrant. The government mandates that employers collect that information precisely because the government wants that information. If you don’t want the government to have that information, stop requiring employers to document their employees.
I suspect you’re right about that, but there’s a world of difference between “selling on the dark web” and “turning over to ICE”.
I was talking about records, not “information”. Do you have the right to march into the HR department and demand that they turn over their copies of your I-9 form? I don’t know, but it would surprise me. I think the legal answer is: that’s their copy, not yours.
Look, I understand that yours and Translucent Daydream’s sensibilities are offended by the idea that an employer might cooperate with law enforcement to catch their own illegal immigrant employees, but I don’t think your sensibilities are reflected in the current state of the law (well, except in California, but I suspect that’s on it’s way to being overturned).
It is not owned by the employer. It is for the government’s use.
Only if they actually tried to charge someone. Government officials are trying to create a chilling effect. They won’t have the balls to actually prosecute anyone. Prosecuting someone for cooperating with the federal government is a step across a very dangerous line, not just in terms of constitutionality, but in terms of rebellion. States don’t have to cooperate with federal law enforcement. They are sovereign. But they cannot prevent American citizens from choosing to cooperate with federal law enforcement.
Tell me, Dopers, what would you call it if the state of Kentucky made it a crime for Kentucky businesses to report the income of their employees to the IRS?
Let me try to provide a real-world analogy:
Federal law requires that gun dealers (FFLs) keep a record of the guns they sell, and who they sell them to. This is known as their “bound book”. It comes into play, to offer one example, when a gun shows up alongside a murdered person. They can look up the serial number, manufacturer X says they sold it to dealer Y (an FFL), and dealer Y can look up in their bound book who they sold it to. Law enforcement can then track down that person and ask “why was your gun found at our murder scene?” (the usual answer is probably “it was lost / stolen”, but that’s another matter). The point, at least as it relates to this discussion is the personal information that I’ve voluntarily turned over to the FFL as a condition for our successfully concluding a business transaction. I had to give him my information in order to buy a gun, just like a would-be employee has to give their employer certain information in order to be employed.
As a person who just wanted to buy a gun, I don’t particularly want the FFL to turn my personal information, that they collected at the time of my purchase, over to the ATF. But I can’t imagine that I could successfullly claim that I’m the rightful “owner” of that information, of that particular page of his “bound book”, and therefore they have no right to share it with the ATF. I imagine trying would result in hearty belly laughs from the judge and whoever the opposing lawyer was.
Does that make sense?
I think you’re probably right, but then again, California is just nuts enough that it wouldn’t entirely shock me if they did actually pursue some prosecutions, to really get the chilling effect going strong. I would guess that it will get smacked down in court too (but my guesses probably aren’t worth much to anyone but myself).
Hence the thread title’s reference to “a real constitutional crisis”.
Yeah, but at the beginning of this thread it was Trump that was possibly creating a crisis. I’m finding Democrats willingness to go down these rabbit holes with Trump discouraging. It’s not smart politics and it’s degrading our politics even further. You know how Democrats used to love to accuse Republicans of basically helping al Qaeda with their actions? Democrats are Trump’s best unintentional allies right now.
True. I thought it was more likely to stem from a Trump-initiated prosecution of state officials back then. Now I think it’s more likely to stem from a state-initiated prosecution of private employers.