Find out what you need to prove if you want to sue your employer for violating your privacy at work.

If you believe that you have been subject to an unreasonable invasion of your privacy at work, your most powerful weapon may be to file a lawsuit against your employer. The U.S. Constitution and your state's constitution and statutes may provide you with some privacy protections at work, but often it will be up to the courts to determine whether an employer's actions are legal in a given context.

When judges evaluate whether a particular workplace search or surveillance action is legal, they must balance two competing concerns: the employer's justification for taking the action with the worker's reasonable expectations of privacy.

As such, your best argument will be if you legitimately expected -- based on your employer's policies and past practices, and common sense -- that the employer would not search certain areas or take certain actions. For example, you may have a high expectation of privacy in the employee restroom or a changing area, particularly if your employer has not warned workers that these areas might be monitored.

Your argument will be stronger if you can show that, in the process of collecting information on you, your employer engaged in one or more of the following practices. Deception. For example, your employer asked you to submit to a routine medical examination, but mentioned nothing about a drug test. However, the urine sample you gave to the examining physician is analyzed for drug traces, and, because drugs were found in your urine, you were fired.

Violation of confidentiality. For example, your employer asked you to fill out a health questionnaire and assured you that the information would be held in confidence for the company's use only. You later discover that the employer divulged the health information to another prospective employer who inquired about you.

Secret, intrusive monitoring.