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Court Opinions ›› Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association (1989)
SKINNER, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION, et al. v. RAILWAY LABOR EXECUTIVES' ASSOCIATION et al.
No. 87-1555 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES 489 U.S. 602; 109 S. Ct. 1402; 103 L. Ed. 2d 639; 1989 U.S. LEXIS 1568; 57 U.S.L.W. 4324; 111 Lab. Cas. (CCH) P11,001; 49 Empl. Prac. Dec. (CCH) P38,791; 1989 OSHD (CCH) P28,476; 4 I.E.R. Cas. (BNA) 224; 130 L.R.R.M. 2857; 13 OSHC (BNA) 2065 November 2, 1988, Argued March 21, 1989, Decided PRIOR HISTORY: CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT. Upon the basis of evidence indicating that alcohol and drug abuse by railroad employees had caused or contributed to a number of significant train accidents, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) promulgated regulations under petitioner Secretary of Transportation's statutory authority to adopt safety standards for the industry. Among other things, Subpart C of the regulations requires railroads to see that blood and urine tests of covered employees are conducted following certain major train accidents or incidents, while Subpart D authorizes, but does not require, railroads to administer breath or urine tests or both to covered employees who violate certain safety rules. Respondents, the Railway Labor Executives' Association and various of its member labor organizations, brought suit in the Federal District Court to enjoin the regulations. The court granted summary judgment for petitioners, concluding that the regulations did not violate the Fourth Amendment. The Court of Appeals reversed, ruling, inter alia, that a requirement of particularized suspicion is essential to a finding that toxicological testing of railroad employees is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The court stated that such a requirement would ensure that the tests, which reveal the presence of drug metabolites that may remain in the body for weeks following ingestion, are confined to the detection of current impairment.
The drug and alcohol tests mandated or authorized by the FRA regulations are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment even though there is no requirement of a warrant or a reasonable suspicion that any particular employee may be impaired, since, on the present record, the compelling governmental interests served by the regulations outweigh employees' privacy concerns.
The possession of unlawful drugs is a criminal offense that the Government may punish, but it is a separate and far more dangerous wrong to perform certain sensitive tasks while under the influence of those substances. Performing those tasks while impaired by alcohol is, of course, equally dangerous, though consumption of alcohol is legal in most other contexts.
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The issue in this case is not whether declaring a war on illegal drugs is good public policy. The importance of ridding our society of such drugs is, by now, apparent to all.
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Precisely because the need for action against the drug scourge is manifest, the need for vigilance against unconstitutional excess is great. History teaches that grave threats to liberty often come in times of urgency, when constitutional rights seem too extravagant to endure.
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These flaws [of the testing program] cast grave doubts on whether that program, though born of good intentions, will do more than ineffectually symbolize the Government's opposition to drug use.
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The majority's acceptance of dragnet blood and urine testing ensures that the first, and worst, casualty of the war on drugs will be the precious liberties of our citizens.
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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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In his first dissenting opinion as a Member of this Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed:
"Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law. For great cases are called great, not by reason of their real importance in shaping the law of the future, but because of some accident of immediate overwhelming interest which appeals to the feelings and distorts the judgment. These immediate interests exercise a kind of hydraulic pressure which makes what previously was clear seem doubtful, and before which even well settled principles of law will bend." Northern Securities Co. v. United States, 193 U.S. 197, 400-401 (1904). A majority of this Court, swept away by society's obsession with stopping the scourge of illegal drugs, today succumbs to the popular pressures described by Justice Holmes. [...]
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