Case Name: Carl WILLNER, Appellee, v. Richard L. THORNBURGH, et al., Appellants
Court: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Jurisdiction: District of Columbia
Decision Date: 1991-03-29
Citations: 289 U.S. App. D.C. 93
Docket Number: No. 90-5156
Parties: Carl WILLNER, Appellee, v. Richard L. THORNBURGH, et al., Appellants.
Judges: Before SILBERMAN, HENDERSON and RANDOLPH, Circuit Judges.
Reporter: United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Volume: 289
Pages: 93–108

Head Matter:
928 F.2d 1185
Carl WILLNER, Appellee, v. Richard L. THORNBURGH, et al., Appellants.
No. 90-5156.
United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.
Argued Oct. 11, 1990.
Decided March 29, 1991.
Stephen H. Sachs, Baltimore, Md., with whom Stephen M. Cutler and Gail C. Bernstein, Arthur B. Spitzer and Elizabeth Symonds, Washington, D.C., were on the brief, for appellee.
Robert V. Zener, Atty., Dept, of Justice, with whom Stuart M. Gerson, Asst. Atty. Gen., and Jay B. Stephens, Washington, D.C., U.S. Atty., were on the brief, for appellants.
Before SILBERMAN, HENDERSON and RANDOLPH, Circuit Judges.

Opinion:
Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge RANDOLPH.
Dissenting opinion filed by Circuit Judge HENDERSON.
RANDOLPH, Circuit Judge:
This appeal adds to the list of constitutional challenges to federal drug-testing programs established pursuant to Executive Order No. 12,564, 51 Fed.Reg. 32,889 (1986). Since the Supreme Court's decision in National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989), which involved a portion of the Customs Service's program, we have ruled on aspects of the drug-testing programs of the Executive Office of the President (Hartness v. Bush, 919 F.2d 170 (D.C.Cir.1990)); the Department of Agriculture (National Treasury Employees Union v. Yeutter, 918 F.2d 968 (D.C. Cir.1990)); the Department of Transportation (American Federation of Government Employees v. Skinner, 885 F.2d 884 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 110 S.Ct. 1960, 109 L.Ed.2d 321 (1990)); the Department of the Army (National Federation of Federal Employees v. Cheney, 884 F.2d 603 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 110 S.Ct. 864, 107 L.Ed.2d 948 (1990)); and the Department of Justice (Harmon v. Thornburgh, 878 F.2d 484 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, — U.S.-, 110 S.Ct. 865, 107 L.Ed.2d 949 (1990)).
Each of our decisions rendered in the wake of Von Raab concerned federal employees who were, as a condition of employment, required to submit urine specimens for testing without any suspicion they were using drugs, and who were selected for testing on a random basis. This case differs from the rest in several respects, the significance of which is in dispute. The plaintiff here is an applicant for government employment. Rather than being selected at random, every applicant must undergo a urine test before being hired for the position he seeks.
Early in 1990, Carl Willner, an attorney, submitted a résumé to the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. After several interviews, he received and accepted a conditional offer to join the Antitrust Division as a trial attorney. In connection with his employment application, Mr. Willner completed an extensive form setting forth detailed information about himself. The Federal Bureau of Investigation then conducted an investigation. On the form, Mr. Willner denied having used marijuana, cocaine, narcotics, hallucinogenics or other illegal drugs during the previous five years. He refused, however, to comply with the Department's request that he provide a urine sample.
The Department of Justice drug-testing plan requires all persons tentatively selected for employment in the Department's Offices, Boards and Divisions to provide a urine sample for testing. Applicants are notified at least forty-eight hours in advance of the time and place for the test. If they fail to show up or refuse to provide a urine sample, they are disqualified from further consideration for the job. If the chemical test of their sample is positive, they will not be offered the position and may not reapply for six months. The chemical analysis is designed to detect use of cocaine, marijuana, amphetamines, opiates and phencyclidine, arid is the same as that described in American Federation of Government Employees, 885 F.2d at 887-88; National Federation of Federal Employees, 884 F.2d at 606; and Harmon, 878 F.2d at 486.
Before applying to the Antitrust Division, Mr. Willner knew of the Department's drug-testing program and of its requirement that all individuals tentatively selected for employment must undergo urinalysis. While in private practice, Mr. Willner represented the plaintiffs in Harmon v. Thornburgh, the first of our drug-testing decisions issued after Von Raab. Harmon sustained random testing of Department of Justice employees having top secret security clearances, but held that suspicionless urinalysis of other Justice Department personnel violated the Fourth Amendment unless those individuals were engaged in drug prosecutions. In view of Harmon, the Justice Department could not require urine tests of attorneys already holding the position Mr. Willner sought, unless they were suspected of drug use.
The district court framed the question as: "whether, between a current Antitrust Division attorney and an applicant for such a position, there is a constitutional distinction that would render the testing of the latter permissible under the Fourth Amendment" (Memorandum of District Court, May 15, 1990, at 4) 738 F.Supp. 1. The court found no such distinction and concluded that the government's interests in requiring the test were the same as those Harmon rejected as insufficient. The court therefore permanently enjoined the Department of Justice from testing applicants for positions when employees occupying those positions could not be tested.
I
Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1390, and its companion case, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1413, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989), held that the government's collection and testing of urine samples from employees according to the procedures outlined in those decisions invaded "reasonable expectations of privacy" and were therefore Fourth Amendment "searches." Such searches, even if conducted without probable cause or suspicion of drug use, do not necessarily infringe upon the Fourth Amendment's "right of the people to be secure in their persons . against unreasonable searches____" Von Raab ruled that "where a Fourth Amendment intrusion serves special governmental needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, it is necessary to balance the individual's privacy expectations against the Government's interests to determine whether it is impractical to require a warrant or some level of individualized suspicion in the particular context." 109 S.Ct. at 1390 (emphasis added).
Von Raab's balancing test is inherently, and doubtless intentionally, imprecise. The Court did not purport to list all of the factors that should be weighed or to identify which factors should be considered more weighty than others. See Harmon, 878 F.2d at 488-89. Nonetheless, balance we must. The condition making it necessary to do so — that the "Fourth Amendment intrusion serves special governmental needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement" (Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1390) — is satisfied in this case. Railway Labor Executives, 109 S.Ct. at 1414, on which Von Raab relied in formulating the standard just quoted, stated that the government's interest in the "operation of a government office" — here the Department of Justice — presents such "special needs." 109 S.Ct. at 1390. Furthermore, the Justice Department does not test applicants for law enforcement purposes; the test results are not distributed and cannot be used as evidence in a criminal trial. Exec.Order No. 12,564, 51 Fed.Reg. at 32,-892. See also Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1390-91.
In our other decisions concerning random drug testing of incumbents, the balance we struck turned to a large extent on the nature of the employee's position. When the job involved drug enforcement or when the employee's drug use might endanger others, for example, we have recognized that the government's interests are sufficiently strong to allow random testing. Harmon, 878 F.2d at 490-91; National Treasury Employees Union, 918 F.2d at 972; American Federation of Government Employees, 885 F.2d at 891-92; National Federation of Federal Employees, 884 F.2d at 612, 613. The job Mr. Willner sought fell within neither category. But that is neither the beginning nor the end of our inquiry. The protections of the Fourth Amendment are graduated in proportion to the privacy interests affected. Decreasing levels of intrusiveness require decreasing levels of justification. If the reasonable privacy expectations of applicants are less than those of employees and if the testing procedure for applicants is itself unintrusive, the government is not required to demonstrate as high a degree of justification as it must to conduct random testing of those already employed.
II
We shall deal first with the extent of privacy interests applicants such as Mr. Willner possess with respect to urine testing. In other contexts, when "the burden of obtaining a warrant is likely to frustrate the governmental purpose behind the search" (Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 533, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1733, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967)), the Fourth Amendment does not require a warrant. See Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U.S. 868, 873-74, 107 S.Ct. 3164, 3168, 97 L.Ed.2d 709 (1987); New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 340, 105 S.Ct. 733, 742, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985); O'Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 725-26, 107 S.Ct. 1492, 1501-02, 94 L.Ed.2d 714 (1987) (plurality opinion). When the "privacy interests implicated by the search are minimal," the Court has recognized, as it did in Von Raab and Railway Labor Executives, that a warrantless search may be reasonable even in the absence of suspicion of illegal conduct. T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 342 n. 8, 105 S.Ct. at 743 n. 8.
As we read the Court's opinions in Von Raab and Railway Labor Executives, even a current employee's "expectation of privacy," while "reasonable" enough to make urine testing a Fourth Amendment "search," can be so "diminished" that the search is not "unreasonable." See Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1390, 1394. This simply recognizes that Fourth Amendment "searches" vary in their intrusiveness. Taking a person's fingerprints, for example, and ransacking a person's dwelling place, while both "searches" (see Hayes v. Florida, 470 U.S. 811, 105 S.Ct. 1643, 84 L.Ed.2d 705 (1985); Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721, 89 S.Ct. 1394, 22 L.Ed.2d 676 (1969)), may require different degrees of justification to make them "reasonable." The district court in this case was surely correct that "an applicant has some expectation of privacy; in applying for a job he does not thereby consent to, for example, a warrantless search of his home" (Memorandum of District Court, May 15, 1990, at 8). But urine testing, particularly in view of the procedures followed at the Justice De partment, is on a different end of the spectrum.
Railway Labor Executives, 109 S.Ct. at 1413, held that urine testing involves two searches, the first when the sample is collected and the second when it is analyzed. As to the first search — the collection process — Justice Department applicants are subjected to far less of an intrusion than were the employees in Railway Labor Executives and Von Raab. In those cases, a "monitor of the same sex as the employee remain[ed] close at hand to listen for the normal sounds of urination" or to observe directly as the employee produced the sample. Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1388; Railway Labor Executives, 109 S.Ct. at 1413; id. at 1428 (Marshall, J., dissenting); see Harmon, 878 F.2d at 486. This procedure, which Justice Scalia found "offensive to personal dignity," Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1398 (dissenting opinion), and which the Court relied upon in finding a Fourth Amendment search, Railway Labor Executives, 109 S.Ct. at 1413, is not part of the Justice Department's program for applicants. There is no purposeful invasion of privacy of the sort involved in Von Raab and Railway Labor Executives. A Justice Department applicant produces the sample, not in a stall or behind a partition, as in Von Raab, but in the privacy of a small room behind a closed door, unless there is reason to suspect tampering. The Program Coordinator of the Department's drug-testing program, in an undisputed affidavit, stated that the sounds of urination cannot be heard and that the Department "certainly does not expect or require the collection person to hover near the door listening for urination sounds. After the individual is escorted to the enclosure, the collection monitor returns to the waiting room to receive the specimen from the individual." For these reasons, the collection process at the Department of Justice simulates what is a common medical procedure, an accepted part of a typical physical examination required by athletic teams, colleges, the military, life insurance companies and private employers. See Bratcher v. United States, 149 F.2d 742, 745 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 325 U.S. 885, 65 S.Ct. 1580, 89 L.Ed. 2000 (1945); see also, McDonell v. Hunter, 612 F.Supp. 1122, 1130 n. 6 (S.D.Iowa 1985), modified, 809 F.2d 1302 (8th Cir.1987).
As to the second search involved in urine testing, the chemical analysis, Railway Labor Executives indicates that this invades privacy because it may reveal "private medical facts about an employee" (109 S.Ct. at 1413). But applicants for employment at the Justice Department cannot reasonably expect to keep such information secret. The only medical facts revealed to the Justice Department are whether the applicant has recently used illegal drugs. By divulging, as Mr. Willner did, whether he uses, or has used within the past five years, marijuana, cocaine, narcotics, hallucinogenics, or other dangerous or illegal drugs, and by consenting to an F.B.I. investigation in which his friends, neighbors, relatives and past and present business associates may be asked if he uses drugs, an applicant relinquishes whatever privacy he might otherwise retain with respect to such information, even when the information is derived from chemical analysis.
We begin then with a comparatively slight disturbance of the applicant's privacy. The collection process is dignified and discreet and unlike that described in Railway Labor Executives and Von Raab; the later test reveals no information that can, under the circumstances, be considered private. Other considerations further diminish the privacy expectations of job applicants like Mr. Willner. They know they will have to undergo a drug test if they are tentatively selected for employment at the Justice Department. Pre-employment testing is not random. Unlike the incumbents in Harmon, all applicants must provide a urine sample before being hired. The procedure is scheduled ahead of time and the applicant is given advance notice of the date. All of this, Von Raab indicated, reduces "to a minimum" the unsettling effect of unexpected intrusions. Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1394 n. 2; see Harmon, 878 F.2d at 489. We recognize, of course, that the government cannot defeat a person's "reasonable" expectation of privacy merely by giving notice of the impending intrusion. See Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 361, 88 S.Ct. 507, 516, 19 L.Ed.2d 576 (1967) (Harlan, J., concurring); United States v. Taborda, 635 F.2d 131, 137 (2d Cir.1980); Amsterdam, Perspectives on the Fourth Amendment, 58 Minn.L.Rev. 349, 384 (1974). But the applicant's knowledge of what will be required, and when, affects the strength of his or her interest. We so held in National Federation of Federal Employees v. Weinberger, 818 F.2d 935, 943 (D.C.Cir.1987): "Advance notice of the employer's condition, however, may be taken into account as one of the factors relevant to the extent of the employees' legitimate expectations of privacy."
Similarly, it is significant that the individual has a large measure of control over whether he or she will be subject to urine testing. No one is compelled to seek a job at the Department of Justice. See Wyman v. James, 400 U.S. 309, 324, 91 S.Ct. 381, 389, 27 L.Ed.2d 408 (1971). If individuals view drug testing as an indignity to be avoided, they need only refrain from applying. This too is an important distinction between applicants and incumbents. The choice presented to current employees — undergo random drug testing or lose your job — is not comparable to that facing applicants. In Judge Friendly's words, "there is a human difference between losing what one has and not getting what one wants." Friendly, Some Kind of Hearing, 123 U.Pa.L.Rev. 1267, 1296 (1975). The plurality opinion in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 476 U.S. 267, 282-83, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 1851, 90 L.Ed.2d 260 (1986), recognized as much: "Denial of a future employment opportunity is not as intrusive as loss of an existing job." See Harmon, 878 F.2d at 489 n. 6.
We are mindful of the fact that the Customs Department employees in Von Raab became subject to drug testing only because they chose to apply for promotions. To that extent, they also had control over whether they would be tested and they had advance knowledge of the testing. The Supreme Court considered these factors among others that served to diminish their expectation of privacy. 109 S.Ct. at 1394 n. 2. We follow the same analysis. Rather than considering a factor separately to determine if it alone would be decisive, we must aggregate the factors on each side in order to strike the balance required by Von Raab. See Hartness, 919 F.2d at 172.
For applicants, still other factors further weaken their privacy expectations with respect to urine testing. As we have mentioned, in order to be considered for a position as an attorney at the Department of Justice, an applicant is required to undergo a thorough and exhaustive background investigation. The applicant is required to complete Standard Form 86 (SF-86), the government "Questionnaire for Sensitive Positions." The information requested includes the address of each of the applicant's residences during the past fifteen years; every job the applicant has held for the last fifteen years; and all organizations, domestic and foreign, with the exception of labor unions and political and religious organizations, of which the applicant has been a member during the last fifteen years. The applicant must also disclose all foreign countries he has visited. He must list all his immediate relatives and the names and addresses of four persons who know him well. The applicant is required to disclose any arrests, criminal charges, or convictions; he must reveal whether he, his spouse, or a company controlled by him has ever declared bankruptcy, been declared bankrupt, been subject to a lien, or had a judgment rendered against them for a debt. The applicant is also asked whether he has ever had a nervous breakdown or medical treatment for a mental condition.
The applicant must also provide information about his involvement with alcohol and illegal drugs. Specifically, the applicant is asked: "Do you now use or supply, or within the last 5 years have you used or supplied, marijuana, cocaine, narcotics, hallucinogenics, or other dangerous or illegal drugs?" The instructions accompanying the form remind the applicant that "knowingly falsifying or concealing a material fact is a felony which may result in fines of up to $10,000, or 5 years imprisonment, or both." The applicant must also sign a release authorizing,
any duly accredited representative of the Federal Government, including those from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Defense, to obtain any information relating to my activities from schools, residential management agents, employers, criminal justice agencies, financial or lending institutions, credit bureaus, consumer reporting agencies, retail business establishments, medical institutions, hospitals or other repositories of medical records, or individuals. This information may include, but is not limited to, my academic, residential, achievement, performance, attendance, personal history, disciplinary, criminal history record, arrest, conviction, medical, psychiatric/psychological, and financial and credit information.
SF-86 at 10.
In addition, applicants for positions at the Justice Department are required to sign a form authorizing the release of their federal income tax returns for the last five years. Joint Appendix (J.A.) 202. The applicant is also fingerprinted for the purposes of checking criminal records. When SF-86 and the tax waiver form have been submitted, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducts a background investigation. As described by the Executive Officer of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department,
The background inquiry is thorough. At a minimum, the FBI will contact all references and close personal associates listed on the SF-86, as well as former spouses, employers and co-workers. The FBI will also conduct neighborhood checks on all residences, interviewing landlords and neighbors____ A regional credit bureau check is also conducted, covering all areas in which the applicant has lived. Military records and police records in all jurisdictions in which the applicant has resided are also examined.
Thus, as a general matter, applicants for Justice Department positions cannot reasonably expect to — and in fact do not— shield their private lives from government scrutiny during the hiring process. The background investigation is an extraordinarily intrusive process designed to uncover a vast array of information about those applying for jobs in the Department of Justice. As the Supreme Court stated in Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1397, this "especially" "may be expected to diminish their expectations of privacy in respect of a urinalysis test." See American Federation of Government Employees, 885 F.2d at 893; National Federation of Federal Employees, 884 F.2d at 612-13.
Common practice, in the government and in the private sector, is also a measure of the degree of privacy job applicants reasonably can expect. See O'Connor v. Ortega, 480 U.S. 709, 732, 107 S.Ct. 1492, 1505, 94 L.Ed.2d 714 (1987) (Scalia, J., concurring); Transportation Institute v. U.S. Coast Guard, 727 F.Supp. 648, 655 (D.D.C.1989). Plagued with increased absenteeism, lower productivity, and workplace disruption connected with employee drug use, private companies have increasingly turned to drug testing as a means of dealing with the problem. A recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that drug-testing programs have become fairly common in the nation's largest firms. The study showed that the larger the work force, the more likely the employer would have a drug-testing program. Almost 60 percent of private employers with 5,000 or more employees had such programs and another 11 percent were considering implementing one. Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Survey of Employer Anti-drug Programs, Report 760, at 6, table 1 (Jan.1989) (J.A. 174).
Overall, "[d]rug-testing programs are aimed more towards job applicants than employees." Id. at 5 (J.A. 173). More than 85 percent of employers with drug-testing programs tested job applicants; of those that tested job applicants, 83 percent tested all applicants while only 16 percent limited testing to selected occupations. Id. at 8, table 4 (J.A. 176). Some of the nation's largest employers, including American Telephone & Telegraph, DuPont, Exxon, Federal Express, Trans World Airlines, and United Airlines, have drug-testing programs for job applicants. See Adams, Random Drug Testing of Government Employees: A Constitutional Procedure, 54 U.Chi.L.Rev. 1335, 1337 (1987). Such testing has become more common in recent years. Between 1982 and 1985 the number of Fortune 500 corporations having drug-testing programs more than doubled. Rothstein, Drug Testing in the Workplace: The Challenge to Employment Relations and Employment Law, 63 Chi.-Kent L.Rev. 683, 703 (1987).
These statistics are of course quite general. They say nothing, for example, about the hiring processes of large private law firms. It is also true that private employers, unconstrained by the Fourth Amendment, may engage in practices the government as employer cannot. Nonetheless, what is occurring generally outside government is some indication of what expectations of privacy "society is prepared to accept as 'reasonable' " when the government engages in the hiring process. Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. at 361, 88 S.Ct. at 516 (Harlan, J., concurring). See California v. Greenwood, 486 U.S. 35, 40-41 & nn. 3, 4, 108 S.Ct. 1625, 1628-29 & nn. 3, 4, 100 L.Ed.2d 30 (1988), which relied on private practices to determine what was a "reasonable" expectation of privacy.
Ill
On the other side of the scale are the interests of the Justice Department. The purpose of weighing the government's interests against those of applicants is to determine whether it would be "impractical to require" that before testing a job applicant, the Justice Department obtain a warrant or suspect that the person is using drugs. Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1390. Our focus is on the government in its role as an employer at the hiring stage. The Department of Justice, of course, is not just any employer. It has a legitimate interest in maintaining public confidence and trust. Drug use among its employees would undermine the Department's credibility as the nation's leading law enforcement agency. But it has other concerns. To the Justice Department, like any other employer, an applicant is a stranger. The hiring process at the Department of Justice, particularly the interviews and background investigation, is designed to gather information so that a judgment may be made regarding the individual's suitability for employment. That too is the purpose of pre-employment drug testing. To require a warrant or individualized suspicion at the hiring stage would therefore all but defeat the purpose of testing applicants.
The Justice Department's interest with respect to applicants is thus not simply promoting a public image of integrity, which Harmon deemed insufficient by itself to overcome the interests of incumbents. 878 F.2d at 490. Any employer, including the Justice Department, makes a considerable investment in terms of time and money whenever it hires someone. The hiring process itself entails substantial costs. Those new to the job must be trained and ordinarily will require some period of time on the job before they reach full productivity. For economic reasons alone, the Department is therefore entitled to compile pertinent information about those who seek positions with it. That is the only sensible way to predict how an applicant would perform and it is why private employers, with increasing frequency, are drug testing applicants. If the practice became even more widespread, if the private sector almost invariably tested for drugs while the public sector did not, individuals with drug problems might tend to migrate toward government employment. Yet the government, no less than private employers, has a very substantial interest in preventing such individuals from entering its work force.
Recent empirical studies have shown that individuals who test positive in pre-employment drug tests have higher rates of absenteeism and involuntary separation. The United States Postal Service, in an ongoing study of the relationship between drug test results and job performance, has found that "[e]mployees who tested positive for drugs were found to have a 47% higher rate of involuntary separation than those who tested negative," and "the positive group ha[d] a 59% higher absence rate than the negative group." U.S. Postal Service, An Empirical Evaluation of Preemployment Drug Testing in the United States Postal Service — Second Interim Report of Findings, at II (Sept.1989). Another, more limited study, "found that those with marijuana-positive urine samples have 55% more industrial accidents, 85% more injuries, and a 78% increase in absenteeism. For those with cocaine-positive urine samples, there was a 145% increase in absenteeism and an 85% increase in injuries." Zwerling, Ryan & Orav, The Efficacy of Preemployment Drug Screening for Marijuana and Cocaine in Predicting Employment Outcome, 264 J.A.M.A. 2639, 2643 (Nov. 28, 1990). These studies and others mentioned in the Postal Service report thus confirm what one would expect — an extremely high correlation between a positive result in a pre-employment drug test and subsequent employment problems. See also, R. De-Cresce, M. Lifshitz, A. Mazura & J. Tilson, Drug Testing in the Workplace (1989); M. De Bernado, Drug Abuse in the Workplace: An Employer's Guide for Prevention (1987).
The government's interest in detecting drug use is substantial at the pre-employment stage because, as we have already mentioned, the applicant is an outsider. Background checks and information supplied by the applicant assist the government in making what can, at best, be only a prediction about the individual. The fact remains that the applicant is a person the government, as prospective employer, has had no opportunity to observe in the setting of the workplace. This too differentiates applicants from incumbents. In Harmon we noted that Justice Department "employees . work in 'traditional office environments,' in which drug use is, presumably, more easily detected by means other than urine testing." 878 F.2d at 489. In regard to incumbents, therefore, direct observation together with the reasonable suspicion test may uncover those employees who ought to be tested. That obviously is not true for applicants and is another factor to be weighed in favor of finding it "impractical" for the Justice Department to obtain warrants or information leading it to suspect drug use before requiring candidates for employment to be tested. See Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1397 ("In assessing the reasonableness of requiring tests of these employees, the court should also consider . the supervision to which these employees are already subject."). For these reasons, commentators otherwise opposed to drug testing of incumbents have concluded that the government, without violating the Fourth Amendment, may require job applicants to undergo urine testing. See 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 10.3, at 123-24 (Supp.1991); Note, Employee Drug Testing — Balancing the Interests in the Workplace: A Reasonable Suspicion Standard, 74 Va.L.Rev. 969, 991-92 (1988); Miller, Mandatory Urinalysis Testing and the Privacy Rights of Subject Employees: Toward a General Theory of Legality Under the Fourth Amendment, 48 U.Pitt.L.Rev. 201, 236-37 (1986).
IV
Our conclusion is that for job applicants like Mr. Willner their privacy expectations in regard to the Justice Department's urine testing requirement are significantly diminished and are far less than those of incumbents. Unlike current employees, job applicants are routinely required to reveal considerable amounts of information about themselves, information the employer uses to make responsible hiring decisions. The urine testing procedure at the Justice Department minimizes the intrusion and the chemical analysis later performed on the urine sample reveals no information the applicant has a cognizable interest in keeping secret. An applicant may avoid even this minimal invasion of privacy by not seeking employment with the Justice Department. On the other hand, the Justice Department's interests, as an employer, in requiring applicants to undergo urinalysis are strong. Drug testing in the context of a job application is commonplace. Although an employer may monitor an incumbent's performance, and thus be required to have individualized suspicion before subjecting the employee to urinalysis, such a requirement for testing applicants would be "impractical." Von Raab, 109 S.Ct. at 1390.
For these reasons we hold that urine tests of applicants for positions as attorneys at the Justice Department do not constitute "unreasonable searches" under the Fourth Amendment. The district court's injunction is therefore vacated.
So ordered.