Supreme Court rules NASA background checks are constitutional

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website; JURIST news archive] on Wednesday unanimously overturned [opinion, PDF] a lower court’s ruling [JURIST report] in NASA v. Nelson [Cornell LII backgrounder; JURIST report] and upheld the background checks that NASA uses for employees of companies working under contract. In 2008 the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [official website] held that the government violates a federal contract employee’s constitutional right to informational privacy when it asks in the course of a…