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 suspicionless tests, according to respondents, signify that candidates, if elected, will be fit to serve their constituents free from the influence of illegal drugs. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent.
Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers.
The Fourth Amendment shields society against that state action. Chief Justice Rehnquist, dissenting. I fear that the novelty of this Georgia law has led the Court to distort Fourth Amendment doctrine in order to strike it down. Under normal Fourth Amendment analysis, the individual's expectation of privacy is an important factor in the equation. Under the Georgia law, the candidate may produce the test specimen at his own doctor's office, which must be one of the least intrusive types of urinalysis drug tests conceivable.