Opinion ID: 2514279
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Does the Municipality have a proper governmental interest in imposing suspicionless substance abuse testing on Fire and Police Department employees?

Text: The Municipality's stated goals in implementing the substance abuse testing are deterring drug usage, sale, and/or possession by Municipal employees in the workplace in order to ensure a safe, healthful, and productive work environment. Policy No. 40 22 at 1. Plaintiffs assert that the Municipality does not have a proper governmental interest because the Municipality has offered no specific evidence that there is a problem with substance abuse among employees in either the Fire Department or Police Department. No evidence has been provided of any specific problem with substance abuse by any employee of the Anchorage Police Department and minimal evidence has been provided concerning the Fire Department. [17] In similar cases, courts have taken judicial notice of the problems of substance abuse in society and have not required a showing of specific drug and alcohol use among the employees to be tested. For example, in National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 674, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989), the Supreme Court took notice that drug abuse is one of the most serious problems confronting our society today. There is little reason to believe that American workplaces are immune from this pervasive social problem. The Court found that [t]he mere circumstance that all but a few of the employees tested are entirely innocent of wrongdoing does not impugn the program's validity. Id. at 676, 109 S.Ct. 1384. The Court concluded that a specific showing of a drug problem in the particular employee group was not necessary: It is sufficient that the Government have a compelling interest in preventing an otherwise pervasive societal problem from spreading to the particular context. Id. at 676, 109 S.Ct. 1384. See also English v. Talladega County Board of Education, 938 F.Supp. 775 (N.D.Ala.1996) (holding that drug testing can be justified in absence of any evidence of drug use in the workforce if drug use is totally incompatible with the nature of the position); American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Cavazos, 721 F.Supp. 1361, 1372 (D.D.C.1989) (determining that court could not strike down drug testing program simply for lack of evidence that government agency had experienced a drug problem in the past). In Doe v. City and County of Honolulu, 8 Haw.App. 571, 816 P.2d 306, 311 (1991), the Hawaii Court of Appeals found that the trial court had not erred in taking judicial notice of the fact that use and abuse of illegal drugs is a serious problem in society and that HFD's fire fighters, as members of society, are not immune from this pervasive social problem. Plaintiffs rely on Guiney v. Police Commissioner of Boston, 411 Mass. 328, 582 N.E.2d 523 (1991), in which a closely-divided Massachusetts Supreme Court held that the intrusion of government-mandated drug testing could not be justified absent specific proof of a drug problem in the group of employees being tested. In the case before us ... the commissioner has made no demonstration, on the record or otherwise, that facts exist that warrant random drug tests of police officers. The record offers nothing to show that there is a drug problem in the Boston police department. Nor is there anything outside of the record of which he could take note that would permit such a conclusion. .... The court should not infer or assume the existence of facts that might justify the governmental intrusion. The reasonableness of a mandated urinalysis cannot fairly be supported by unsubstantiated possibilities. If the government is to meet the requirements of [Massachusetts's constitutional search and seizure provision], it must show at least a concrete, substantial governmental interest that will be served by imposing random urinalysis on unconsenting citizens. In such a case, the justification for body searches, if there ever can be one, cannot rest on some generalized sense that there is a drug problem in this country, in Boston, or in the Boston police department and that random urinalyses of police officers will solve, or at least help to solve, the problem or its consequences. We reject the view of the majority of the Justices of the Supreme Court that such proof is not required because [i]t is sufficient that the Government have a compelling interest in preventing an otherwise pervasive societal problem from spreading to the particular context. See National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, supra 489 U.S. at 675 n. 3, 109 S.Ct. 1384. The Guiney case has not been followed by other courts. It fails to appropriately consider the legitimate goals of substance abuse deterrence and prevention in light of the power vested in the police department and the public's reliance on the individual employee's physical and mental acuity in carrying out both Fire Department and Police Department responsibilities for the public welfare and safety. Prior to the U.S. Supreme decisions in Skinner and Von Raab, the Alaska Supreme Court addressed drug testing in the context of private employment. Luedtke v. Nabors Alaska Drilling, Inc., 768 P.2d 1123 (Alaska 1989). Although the constitutional right to privacy was not implicated because no state action was involved, the court applied the Ravin balancing test finding that it is analogous to the analysis that should be followed in cases construing the public policy exception to the at-will employment doctrine. Id. at 1135. The court observed that work on an oil rig could be very dangerous and found that it was important for oil rig workers to be drug-free on the job in order to protect the safety of other personnel and the oil field. Id. at 1136. It then weighed the public policy supporting the employees' privacy in off-duty activities against the public policy supporting the protection of the health and safety of other workers as well as the employees in question, and determined that the health and safety concerns were paramount. Id. at 1136. The court did not require a specific showing of a current drug problem among oil rig workers. The position articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Von Raab and the approach taken by the Alaska Supreme Court in Luedtke are persuasive on the issue of whether the Municipality must establish specific instances of substance abuse in the workplace before initiating a testing program. Although evidence of specific drug or alcohol abuse problems in the Police or Fire Department would be persuasive of the need for the testing program, the absence of significant statistical or anecdotal evidence of a drug or alcohol problem is not dispositive. The court takes judicial notice that drug and alcohol abuse is a serious problem in society. The court further observes that the use of illegal drugs and abuse of alcohol are incompatible with positions whose duties include a substantially significant degree of responsibility for the safety of the public where the unsafe performance of an incumbent could result in death or injury to self or others. Policy § 5(t). Further, the workplaces of both the Police Department and the Fire Department are not confined to the stations; their workplace is everywhere in the community that Fire Department and Police Department services are needed. The court concludes that the Municipality has a proper governmental interest, one which is concerned with the health [or] safety ... of others, Ravin v. State, 537 P.2d 494, 504 (Alaska 1975), and that this interest outweighs the Plaintiffs' privacy interest.