Court will decide if NASA checks can continue

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court will decide whether to continue to block background checks of low-risk employees at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

The high court on Monday agreed to hear an appeal from the space agency, which had its worker investigation stopped after an appeals court said the questions threatened the constitutional rights of workers.

The workers claimed NASA was invading their privacy by requiring the investigations, which included probes into medical records and questioning of friends about everything from their finances to their sex lives.

If they didn't agree to the checks, they were to be barred from the JPL campus and fired. Lower courts had stopped the background checks.