Opinion ID: 12443
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Overview, Including The Law At The Time Of The Urinalysis

Text: 84 Drug Test Order In The Present Case And Prior Thereto. The Fourth Amendment provides: 85 The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. 86 Until the late 1960's, the steadfast rule was that in order for a search to be reasonable, law enforcement officials must first obtain a warrant from a neutral and detached magistrate by establishing probable cause that a law had been violated; and that in the few specific situations in which obtaining a warrant was deemed impracticable probable cause was still required. See, e.g., Carroll v. United States, 267 U.S. 132, 45 S.Ct. 280, 69 L.Ed. 543 (1925); Agnello v. United States, 269 U.S. 20, 46 S.Ct. 4, 70 L.Ed. 145 (1925). As the Supreme Court considered nontraditional applications of the Fourth Amendment, however, such as searches by public inspections officials, See Camara v. Municipal Court, 387 U.S. 523, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 18 L.Ed.2d 930 (1967), and frisks by police officers, Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 88 S.Ct. 1868, 20 L.Ed.2d 889 (1968), it found it needed more flexibility than the warrant and probable cause requirements could provide. The Court began, in limited circumstances, to recognize specific permissible departures from the traditional probable cause requirement, after balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails. Camara, 387 U.S. at 537, 87 S.Ct. at 1735; See Terry, 392 U.S. at 21, 88 S.Ct. at 1879-80. The departures have been of two different kinds: (1) those requiring only reasonable individualized suspicion; and (2) those requiring no individualized suspicion but only a random or other nonarbitrary selection process. See Wayne R. LaFave, Computers, Urinals, and Fourth Amendment: Confessions of a Patron Saint, 94 MICH. L. REV . 2553, 2575-1576 (1996)[hereinafter LaFave]; Cf. Terry v. Ohio, supra, and Camara v. Municipal Court, supra. 87 Each situation in which the Supreme Court has created an exception that allows an intrusion without reasonable individualized suspicion is markedly different from the state mandated urinalysis test situation in the present case. In comparison, each of those cases is clearly distinguishable from the present case on one or more of the following grounds: (1) the nature of the intrusion was much less severe; (2) the magnitude of the governmental need for the search was far greater; and/or (3) it was impracticable or impossible to respond to the governmental need with the individualized suspicion requirement. See LaFave at 2577. (citing and referencing cases). 88 For example, the premises inspection cases do not involve a serious intrusion upon personal privacy because even the housing inspections, and especially the business inspections, are not personal in nature. Camara, 387 U.S. at 537, 87 S.Ct. at 1735. The concern of the inspector is directed toward such facilities as the plumbing, heating, ventilation, gas and electrical systems, and toward the accumulation of garbage and debris, and there is no rummaging through private papers and effects of the householder. By comparison, the type of search at issue in the present case is very personal in nature, intruding upon an excretory function traditionally shielded by great privacy. Skinner, 489 U.S. at 626, 109 S.Ct. at 1418; LaFave at 2577-2578. 89 The present case is distinguishable from the special needs urinalysis cases, and from other Fourth Amendment cases, in which searches without individualized suspicion were permitted, because those cases involved far greater magnitudes of risks. The searches in those cases were responsive to situations in which even one undetected instance of wrongdoing could have injurious consequences for a great number of people: as in the case of building inspections, even a single safety code violation can cause fires and epidemics that ravage large urban areas. Camara, 387 U.S. at 535, 87 S.Ct. at 1734; as in airport screening, where even a single hijacked plane can result in the destruction of hundreds of human lives and millions of dollars of property. United States v. Edwards, 498 F.2d 496, 500 (2d Cir.1974); as in particular comprehensive drug-testing programs, in Skinner for example, where a single drug-impaired train operator could produce disastrous consequences including great human and property loss, Skinner, 489 U.S. at 628, 109 S.Ct. at 1419; in Von Raab, where a customs official using drugs could cause the noninterdiction of a sizable drug shipment and consequently injury to the lives of many, and perhaps a breach of national security, Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 670, 674, 109 S.Ct. at 1393, 1395; and in Vernonia in which the significant government interest in a drug free secondary educational and athletic environment has a national impact of great magnitude on vast numbers of school children who are not free adults but are under the guardianship of public school districts throughout the country. Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995); See LaFave at 2578. 90 Most important of all, the cases allowing a search without individualized suspicion upheld the suspicionless searches only after recognizing the Fourth Amendment's general rule requiring at least reasonable individualized suspicion, and then pointed to sound reasons why that standard would be unworkable under the unusual circumstances presented. In Camara, the court emphasized that an individualized suspicion test was impracticable for safety inspections because evidence of code violations ordinarily was not observable from outside the premises. Camara, 387 U.S. at 537, 87 S.Ct. at 1735. Suspicionless searches of prisoners after contact visits are permissible precisely because the extent of scrutiny necessary to obtain individualized suspicion would cause obvious disruption of the confidentiality and intimacy that these visits are intended to afford. Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 560 n. 40, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 1885 n. 40, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979) In Skinner, requiring individualized suspicion for testing train operators after an accident was not feasible because the scene of a serious rail accident is chaotic. Skinner, 489 U.S. at 631, 109 S.Ct. at 1420. In Von Raab, the suspicion requirement for testing customs officials was impractical because it was not feasible to subject [such] employees and their work product to the kind of day-to-day scrutiny that is the norm in more traditional office environments. Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 674, 109 S.Ct. at 1395. The border search and airport search cases are obviously distinguishable because in each the authorities are in a now-or-never situation as to large numbers of travelers who could not feasibly have been subjected to prior unintrusive scrutiny. See, e.g., United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617 (1977); United States v. Moreno, 475 F.2d 44 (5th Cir.1973); LaFave at 2578-2579. 91 By contrast, there is no comparable justification or precedent for allowing the state medical school administrative officers in the present case to order physician-resident trainee drug tests without individualized suspicion. Each relatively small group of residents is under constant supervision and/or observation by veteran doctors, nurses, hospital workers, administrators and peers. In this case, Dr. Pierce was one of only six residents in Texas Tech's emergency medicine program. Plainly, there has been no showing that the reasonable individualized suspicion test would likely be ineffectual under the circumstances of the Physician-residents' employment and training.