opinion: Alan F. McDONELL, M. Lee Curran, and Sally Phipps, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, Appellees, v. Susan HUNTER, Jean Sebek, Russell Behrends, and Harold Farrier, Appellants.
  No. 84-1346.
  United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
  Submitted Oct. 8, 1984.
  Decided Nov. 2, 1984.
  Mark Hunacek, Asst. Atty. Gen., Des Moines, Iowa, for appellants.
  Mark W. Bennett, Des Moines, Iowa, for appellees.
  Before ARNOLD, FAGG and BOWMAN, Circuit Judges.
  ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
  This case involves policies of the Iowa Department of Corrections which permit strip searches, urinalyses, and blood tests of correctional officers and searches of the officers’ cars. The District Court granted a preliminary injunction preventing the Department from conducting these searches except under specified conditions. We hold that the District Court did not abuse its discretion in granting this preliminary relief and therefore affirm its order.
  I.
  Plaintiff McDonell began work as a correctional officer at the Iowa Men’s Reformatory in 1979. Upon starting his employment at this facility, McDonell signed a consent-to-search form. On January 17, 1984, prison officials informed McDonell that they had received information that he was seen the previous weekend with persons suspected of trafficking in illegal drugs. They asked him to take a urinalysis test. McDonell eventually refused to take the test and was fired on January 19. After this lawsuit was initiated, McDonell was reinstated but transferred to a different institution and lost ten days’ pay.
  The plaintiffs Sally Phipps and M. Lee Curran are correctional officers at Iowa Correctional Institution for Women. On August 2, 1983, they were told by prison officials that the Department planned to conduct strip searches, blood tests, and urinalyses on Department employees and were asked to sign a form consenting to such searches. Both women refused to sign the consent form, and they were told that they would be subject to compelled urinalyses, blood tests, strip searches, and searches of their vehicles, despite their refusal to sign the form.
  The plaintiffs filed this lawsuit on Janu-, ary 31, 1984. After a hearing at which all ; parties participated, the District Court is-: sued a temporary restraining order and j then a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Department from conducting strip 1 searches, blood tests, and urinalyses unless the searching officials have a reasonable suspicion, based on specific objective facts and reasonable inferences, that the employee is smuggling contraband or under the influence of alcohol or a controlled substance. The court also enjoined the warrantless search of employees’ automobiles parked outside the confines of a prison facility.
  II.
  On appeal, the defendants urge that the District Court erred in several respects: (1) in requiring a “reasonable suspicion” rather than a “mere suspicion” as the basis for conducting the strip searches and tests in question; (2) in holding that the consent form was not a valid waiver of Fourth Amendment rights; (3) in requiring a valid warrant or consent for searches of automobiles parked outside of the prison walls; and (4) in concluding that plaintiffs were under a threat of irreparable harm.
  On review of the grant or denial of a preliminary injunction, our inquiry is limited to determining whether the District Court abused its discretion. Dataphase Systems, Inc. v. C L Systems, Inc., 640 F.2d 109, 114 n. 8 (8th Cir.1981) (en banc). In making this determination, we must specifically consider four factors: (1) the threat of irreparable harm to the movant; (2) the state of balance between this harm and the injury that granting the injunction will inflict on other parties; (3) the probability that the movant will succeed on the merits; and (4) the public interest.
  After considering these four factors, we are not convinced that the District Court abused its discretion in granting the preliminary relief described above. The violation of privacy in being subjected to the searches and tests in question is an irreparable harm that could reasonably be found to outweigh whatever increase in security the enforcement of the Department’s policies might produce. The District Court’s assessment of the parties’ likelihood of success on the merits, when viewed against the background of the other Dataphase factors, is not so unreasonable as to deserve condemnation as an abuse of discretion. See Hunter v. Auger, 672 F.2d 668, 674-75 (8th Cir.1982).
  Although we uphold the preliminary injunction which the District Court issued, this holding does not reach the merits of this dispute, since it is based upon an abuse-of-discretion standard of review. Hence, our holding does not in any way affect the defendants’ right to litigate the constitutionality of the disputed policies at the trial on the merits or before this Court on a subsequent appeal from the District Court’s final judgment.
  Affirmed.
  . The Hon. Harold D. Vietor, United States District Judge for the Southern District of Iowa.
  . At oral argument we were informed that some new evidence, not now in the record, will be offered at the trial on the merits.
instruction: What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
  Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
  In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
  To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
  United States of America,
  Plaintiff, Appellant
  v
  International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
  Defendant, Appellee.
  International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
  Defendants, Cross-appellants
  v
  United States of America.
  Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
  of the Board
  Plaintiff, Appellants,
  v
  United States of America,
  Defendant, Appellee.
  This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
  Your task is to identify the state of the first listed state or local government agency that is an appellant.
choices: not Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachussets Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New New New New North North Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode South South Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Wisconsin Wyoming Virgin Puerto District Guam not Panama