Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03371/USCOURTS-ca7-14-03371-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

---

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________ 

Nos. 14-3369, -3371 

JOSEPH PEERY, et al., 

Plaintiffs-Appellants, 

v.

CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY, et al., 

Defendants-Appellees. 

____________________ 

Appeals from the United States District Court for the 

Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division. 

Nos. 13 C 5819, 6541 — Sharon Johnson Coleman, Judge. 

____________________ 

ARGUED JUNE 2, 2015 — DECIDED JULY 1, 2015 

____________________ 

Before POSNER, EASTERBROOK, and SYKES, Circuit Judges. 

POSNER, Circuit Judge. The plaintiffs, five residents of 

buildings in Chicago that are privately owned, received 

housing vouchers from the Chicago Housing Authority to 

enable them to rent apartments in these buildings. Their suit, 

which names as defendants the CHA plus two building 

owners, complains that the Authority is complicit in—

indeed ultimately responsible for—a deprivation by the 

building owners of the plaintiffs’ constitutionally protected 

Case: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7
2 Nos. 14-3369, -3371 

privacy. The plaintiffs sought and were denied a preliminary 

injunction in the district court, and they appeal the denial to 

us. 

The defendant building owners require their tenants to 

be tested annually for illegal drugs; passing the test is a condition of a tenant’s being allowed to renew his or her lease 

for another year. The requirement applies to all tenants, not 

just those who might be suspected of using illegal drugs. If 

as the defendants argue the owners are alone responsible for 

the testing requirement, there is no constitutional violation, 

because the owners are private citizens rather than employees of the state or city. As the Supreme Court explained in 

Blum v. Yaretsky, 457 U.S. 991, 1004 (1982), “constitutional 

standards are [applicable] only when it can be said that the 

State is responsible for the specific conduct of which the 

plaintiff complains. The importance of this assurance is evident when, as in this case, the complaining party seeks to 

hold the State liable for the actions of private parties. ... [A] 

State normally can be held responsible for a private decision 

only when it has exercised coercive power or has provided 

such significant encouragement, either overt or covert, that 

the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State.” If, 

however, the CHA, a government agency, is responsible for 

the compulsory drug testing of which the tenants complain 

(we’ll assume that shared responsibility would be enough), 

then unless all the tenants have consented to the tests, the 

agency would have to justify its drug-testing policy as “reasonable” within the current meaning of the Fourth Amendment, made applicable to state agencies, such as the CHA, 

by interpretation of the due process clause of the Fourteenth 

Amendment. See Board of Education v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822 

Case: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7
Nos. 14-3369, -3371 3 

(2002); Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association, 489 

U.S. 602 (1989). 

The district court denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction on the ground that the drug-testing policy was private rather than state action and therefore beyond 

the reach of the Fourth Amendment. The court denied the 

plaintiffs’ motion on a second ground as well—that they had 

consented to the testing—but we need not reach that issue 

and will express no view on it. 

A number of the tenants in the buildings are former residents of public housing owned by the CHA. Beginning in 

2000 the CHA began implementing a “Plan for Transformation” of its public housing developments. The Plan contemplated replacing a number of housing developments that 

the CHA owned with privately owned, mixed-income developments. Residents who had previously lived in CHAowned units could apply for admission to one of the new 

developments, or they could apply for a voucher usable to 

obtain housing in privately owned buildings not involved in 

the transformation. The CHA would continue to subsidize 

the rents of tenants relocating to these buildings from traditional public housing. 

Each of the new developments is overseen by a “working 

group” that controls, among other things, the criteria for 

admission to the development. The CHA appoints one representative to each of these working groups, but does not 

control them. The agency does not require the building 

owners to institute annual (or any) mandatory drug tests for 

residents. Nor does it yank housing vouchers from residents 

who flunk such a test. Nor do the working groups do any of 

those things. Although a number of the buildings in the reCase: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7
4 Nos. 14-3369, -3371 

development program do require such tests, others do not, 

and as a result only a slight majority (56 percent) of the tenants in the entire array of buildings are required to take 

them. 

People eligible for subsidized housing in buildings in the 

transformation program have some, though limited, choice 

about whether to become tenants of a building that does, or 

a building that does not, require such tests. Their choice is 

necessarily limited because vacancies are limited. Many of 

the buildings have lengthy waiting lists, and in some buildings the lists are closed. CHA, “Find Public Housing: Your 

Search for ‘Closed’ Returned 58 Properties,” www.

thecha.org/residents/public-housing/find-public-housing/?w

ls=0 (visited June 29, 2015). 

The CHA does not disapprove of drug testing in the 

mixed-income developments; indeed there is at least some 

evidence that it thinks it a good idea (as do some tenants, 

who prefer living in buildings that require the tests; presumably they are persons who neither use illegal drugs themselves nor wish to live in the same building with people who 

do). But the plaintiffs are mistaken to equate governmental 

encouragement of private “searches” (the drug tests are 

searches within the judicially construed meaning of the 

Fourth Amendment) with the government’s conducting 

searches. Government officials and agencies spend a great 

deal of time urging private persons and firms and other institutions to change their behavior (for example, to adopt 

healthier diets or use public transit more) without backing 

up their urging with coercion or the threat of it. Physically fit 

young men and women are encouraged to enlist in the 

armed forces, but there is no longer a draft, and so there is 

Case: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7
Nos. 14-3369, -3371 5 

no coercion to enlist and it would be absurd to claim that encouraging enlistment is the equivalent of forcing people to 

serve. A President will sometimes ask people to pray for 

something, but his request is not compulsion either. We noted in Freedom from Religion Foundation, Inc. v. Obama, 641 F.3d 

803 (7th Cir. 2011), that since people are free to ignore the 

President’s call for prayer, no one had standing to sue him 

for violating the Constitution by forcing religion down people’s throats. 

Drugs are a plague on the poor in Chicago, and it is certainly permissible for the organ of city government that is 

responsible for the living conditions of the City’s poor to 

urge private measures to reduce addiction to those drugs 

and reduce the commerce in those drugs that fosters and 

feeds the addiction; but again, urging is not requiring. 

The plaintiffs argue that the “working groups have never 

acted over CHA opposition.” But the working groups do not 

require drug testing; and since so many of the buildings at 

issue do not require such tests, it follows that the CHA is not 

coercing building owners to require testing. The plaintiffs do 

not explain why, if the CHA requires drug testing in some 

buildings, it doesn’t in others; and this is evidence that the 

decision whether to require the testing is indeed left to the 

building owners rather than imposed on them by government. Further evidence is that one of the two building owners that are defendants in this case along with the CHA—

namely Holsten Management Corporation—instituted drug 

testing in its buildings in the mid-1990s, years before it had 

any involvement with the CHA, and it continues to require 

drug testing in buildings that it owns that have no involvement with the agency. 

Case: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7
6 Nos. 14-3369, -3371 

It’s true that the owner of one mixed-income development declared that it was imposing a requirement of drug 

testing at the request of the CHA. It said it had “never imposed a drug testing requirement at any of our properties; 

we believe that we have created and maintained good places 

to live without drug testing policies. However, we are including one here ... because the CHA and members of the 

community have told us to do so.” (The “members of the 

community” would be members of the development’s working group, which has to approve a building owner’s tenantselection plan.) 

But request and command are not synonyms. As we said, 

government does a lot of urging without backing it up by 

force of law. The plaintiffs have failed to show that either 

“members of the community” or the CHA commanded the 

building owner to require drug testing. By “told us to do so” 

the owner may simply have been saying—to whoever questioned the decision to institute drug testing—“don’t blame 

us, we’re just doing what we’ve been told to do.”

Finally, as the district court emphasized, none of the 

plaintiffs had requested transfer from the drug-testing building in which he or she currently resides to a building that 

does not require drug testing. The plaintiffs argue that it 

would have been futile for them to seek transfer, noting that 

a CHA employee had in 2009 emailed an employee of the 

federal Department of Housing and Urban Development 

that a resident who refused to take a drug test would not be 

eligible for transfer to another building. But a representative 

of the CHA testified that his agency would have approved 

such a request, and the district judge credited this represenCase: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7
Nos. 14-3369, -3371 7 

tation in denying the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. 

The motion was properly denied. 

AFFIRMED. 

Case: 14-3371 Document: 50 Filed: 07/01/2015 Pages: 7