Donovan v. Lone Steer, Inc., 464 U.S. 408 (1984)

Justice Rehnquist

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Section 11(a) of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSAor Act), 52Stat. 1066, 29 U. S. C. § 211(a), authorizes the Secretary of Labor to investigate and gather data regarding wages, hours, and other conditions of employment to determine whether an employer is violating the Act.1 Section

9 of the FLSA, 29 U. S. C. § 209, empowers the Secretary of Labor to subpoena witnesses and documentary evidence relating to any matter under investigation.2 Pursuant to those provisions, an official of the Department of Labor served an administrative subpoena duces tecum on an employee of appellee Lone Steer, Inc., a motel and restaurant located in Steele, N. D. The subpoena directed an officer or agent of appellee with personal knowledge of appellee’s records to appear at the Wage and Hour Division of the United States Department of Labor in Bismarck, N. D., and

to produce certain payroll and sales records. In an action filed by appellee to challenge the validity of the subpoena, the District Court for the District of North Dakota held that, although the Secretary of Labor had complied with the applicable provisions of the PLSA in issuing the subpoena, enforcement of the subpoena would violate the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution because the Secretary had not previously obtained a judicial warrant. We noted probable jurisdiction of the Secretary’s appeal, 462 U. S. 1105 (1983), and we now reverse the judgment of the District Court.

On January 6, 1982, A1 Godes, a Compliance Officer with the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor, telephoned Susanne White, appellee’s manager, to inform her that he intended to begin an investigation of appellee the following morning and to request that she have available for inspection payroll records for all employees for the past two years. White telephoned Godes later that day to inform him that it would not be convenient to conduct the inspection on the following morning. After some preliminary skirmishing between the parties, during which appellee inquired about the scope and reason for the proposed investigation and appellants declined to provide specific information, Godes and Gerald Hill, Assistant Area Director from the Wage and Hour Division in Denver, arrived at appellee’s premises on February 2, 1982, for the purpose of conducting the investigation. After waiting for White, Godes served the administrative subpoena at issue here on one of appellee’s other employees. The subpoena was directed to any employee of appellee having custody and personal knowledge of the records specifically described therein, records which appellee was required by law to maintain. See 29 CFR §§ 516.2(a), 516.5(c) (1983). The subpoena directed the employee to appear with those records at the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor in Bismarck, N. D.

Appellee refused to comply with the subpoena and sought declaratory and injunctive relief in the District Court, claiming that the subpoena constituted an unlawful search and seizure in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Appellants counterclaimed for enforcement of the subpoena. The District Court concluded that the actions of appellants in issuing the administrative subpoena “unquestionably comport with the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act, as amended, 29 U. S. C. §201, et seq.” App. A to Juris. Statement 6a. Relying on our decision in Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., 436 U. S. 307 (1978), however, the District Court held that the applicable provisions of the FLSA violate the Fourth Amendment insofar as they authorize the Secretary of Labor to issue an administrative subpoena without previously having obtained a judicial warrant. In Barlow’s this Court declared unconstitutional the provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSHA) which authorized inspectors to enter an employer’s premises without a warrant to conduct inspections of work areas. The District Court rejected appellants’ arguments that Barlow’s is not dispositive of the issue here by stating:

obtained a valid warrant.” App. A to Juris. Statement 8a.3

We think that the District Court undertook to decide a case not before it when it held that appellants may not “enter upon the premises” of appellee to inspect its records without first having obtained a warrant. The only “entry” upon appel-lee’s premises by appellants, so far as the record discloses, is that of Godes on February 2, 1982, when he and Gerald Hill entered the motel and restaurant to attempt to conduct an investigation. The stipulation of facts entered into by the parties, App. 11-17, and incorporated into the opinion of the District Court, App. A to Juris. Statement 2a-8a, describe what happened next:

An entry into the public lobby of a motel and restaurant for the purpose of serving an administrative subpoena is scarcely the sort of governmental act which is forbidden by the Fourth Amendment. The administrative subpoena itself did not authorize either entry or inspection of appellee’s premises; it merely directed appellee to produce relevant wage and hour records at appellants’ regional office some 25 miles away.

The governmental actions which required antecedent administrative warrants in Marshall v. Barlow’s, Inc., supra, and Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U. S. 523 (1967), are quite different from the governmental action in this case. In Barlow’s an OSHA inspector sought to conduct a search of nonpublic working areas of an electrical and plumbing installation business. In Camara a San Francisco housing inspector sought to inspect the premises of an apartment building in that city. See also See v. City of Seattle, 387 U. S. 541 (1967) (involving a similar search by a fire inspector of commercial premises). In each case, this Court held that an administrative warrant was required before such a search could be conducted without the consent of the owner of the premises.

It is plain to us that those cases turned upon the effort of the government inspectors to make nonconsensual entries into areas not open to the public. As we have indicated, no such entry was made by appellants in this case. Thus the enforceability of the administrative subpoena duces tecum at issue here is governed, not by our decision in Barlow’s as the District Court concluded, but rather by our decision in Oklahoma Press Publishing Co. v. Walling, 327 U. S. 186 (1946). In Oklahoma Press the Court rejected an employer’s claim that the subpoena power conferred upon the Secretary of Labor by the FLSA violates the Fourth Amendment.

and made after adequate opportunity to present objections . . . Id., at 195 (footnotes omitted).

We cited Oklahoma Press with approval in See v. City of Seattle, supra, a companion case to Camara, and described the constitutional requirements for administrative subpoenas as follows:

See also United States v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U. S. 632, 652-653 (1950).

Thus although our cases make it clear that the Secretary of Labor may issue an administrative subpoena without a warrant, they nonetheless provide protection for a subpoenaed employer by allowing him to question the reasonableness of the subpoena, before suffering any penalties for refusing to comply with it, by raising objections in an action in district court. See v. City of Seattle, supra, at 544-545; Oklahoma Press, supra, at 208-209. Our holding here, which simply reaffirms our holding in Oklahoma Press, in no way leaves an employer defenseless against an unreasonably burdensome administrative subpoena requiring the production of documents. We hold only that the defenses available to an employer do not include the right to insist upon a judicial warrant as a condition precedent to a valid administrative subpoena.

Appellee insists that “[t]he official inspection procedure used by the appellants reveal[s] that the use of the administrative subpoena is inextricably intertwined with the entry process,” Brief for Appellee 11, and states that it is appel

lants’ established policy to seek entry inspections by expressly relying on its inspection authority under §11 of the FLSA. Id., at 12. We need only observe that no non-consensual entry into protected premises was involved in this case.

The judgment of the District Court is accordingly