ALBANY — A court has upheld the state’s use of a tracking device on an employee’s private car to investigate whether he was skipping work and falsifying time sheets.

In a ruling yesterday, the Appellate Division panel was split over whether the GPS tracking violated Michael Cunningham’s constitutional privacy rights.

But three of five judges decided that the state Labor Department, where Cunningham was director of staff and organizational development for 20 years, had reasonable grounds, since he was disciplined previously for filing false time records and officials suspected it was continuing.

Cunningham was fired last year.