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Searches and Seizures: Drug Testing The Supreme Court actually ruled that drug testing is an invasion of privacy to such an extent that it is a search. When drug testing is conducted by a government entity, it is governed by the Fourth Amendment. But what about drug testing in schools? Does it matter whether a school is public or private? What about drug testing at work? Can a private entity let police know of a positive result? These questions are explored here. Pages: ‹1› ‹2› ‹3› ‹4› ‹5› ‹6› ‹7› ‹8› ‹9›
The majority's concern with the railroad safety problems caused by drug and alcohol abuse is laudable; its cavalier disregard for the text of the Constitution is not. There is no drug exception to the Constitution, any more than there is a communism exception or an exception for other real or imagined sources of domestic unrest.
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Our precedents establish that the proffered special need for drug testing must be substantial -- important enough to override the individual's acknowledged privacy interest, sufficiently vital to suppress the Fourth Amendment's normal requirement of individualized suspicion.
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Respondents' defense of the statute rests primarily on the incompatibility of unlawful drug use with holding high state office. The statute is justified, respondents contend, because the use of illegal drugs draws into question an official's judgment and integrity; jeopardizes the discharge of public functions, including antidrug law enforcement efforts; and undermines public confidence and trust in elected officials. Brief for Respondents 11-18. The statute, according to respondents, serves to deter unlawful drug users from becoming candidates and thus stops them from attaining high state office. [...] Notably lacking in respondents' presentation is any indication of a concrete danger demanding departure from the Fourth Amendment's main rule.
Nothing in the record hints that the hazards respondents broadly describe are real and not simply hypothetical for Georgia's polity. [...]
A demonstrated problem of drug abuse, while not in all cases necessary to the validity of a testing regime, [...] would shore up an assertion of special need for a suspicionless general search program. Proof of unlawful drug use may help to clarify -- and to substantiate -- the precise hazards posed by such use.
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What is left, after close review of Georgia's scheme, is the image the State seeks to project. By requiring candidates for public office to submit to drug testing, Georgia displays its commitment to the struggle against drug abuse. [...] The need revealed, in short, is symbolic, not "special," as that term draws meaning from our case law.
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