In August 2007, 28 JPL scientists and engineers including lead plaintiff Robert "Half" Nelson, a senior research scientist at JPL, sued NASA, Caltech, and the Department of Commerce in the District Court for the Central District of California, alleging that the background-check requirement violated a constitutional right to informational privacy.

The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the background checks required of the JPL employees violated a right to informational privacy.

In two previous cases, Whalen v. Roe and Nixon v. General Services Administration, the Supreme Court hinted that such a right might exist, but it had never settled the issue definitively.

In an 8–0 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the NASA background checks did not violate any such constitutional privacy right that might exist.

In addition to joining Scalia, Thomas also filed his own, very short (single-paragraph) concurrence, objecting to the idea of a constitutional right to informational privacy.