Opinion ID: 2514279
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Suspicionless Substance Abuse Testing

Text: Police Employees and Fire Fighters mount their challenge to the Municipality's suspicionless testing policy along four constitutional fronts. [9] They contend that the policy violates the right to privacy and the prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures; they press each of these theories under the Alaska and United States Constitutions. The superior court's thorough and thoughtful decision on summary judgment addressed each of these claims but placed primary emphasis on the alleged violations of Alaska's constitutional right to privacy. [10] For the reasons explained below, however, we prefer to resolve the parties' arguments using the analytical framework that governs unlawful searches and seizures; and although we find substantial guidance in cases interpreting the United States Constitution, we limit our decision to the requirements of the Alaska Constitution's search and seizure clause. Article I, section 14, of the Alaska Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses and other property, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. Article I, section 22, defines Alaska's right to privacy: The right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed. The legislature shall implement this section. We have held that both of these provisions afford broader protection than their federal counterparts. Alaska's guaranty of privacy is broader than the protection found in the federal constitution, which contains no express privacy provision: Since the citizens of Alaska, with their strong emphasis on individual liberty, enacted an amendment to the Alaska Constitution expressly providing for a right to privacy not found in the United States Constitution, it can only be concluded that the right is broader in scope than that of the Federal Constitution. [11] And Alaska's search and seizure clause is stronger than the federal protection because article I, section 14 is textually broader than the Fourth Amendment, [12] and the clause draws added strength from Alaska's express guarantee of privacy. [13] Because the Alaska Constitution provides broader protection to Police Employees and Fire Fighters under both constitutional theories that they argue in this appeal, we need only determine whether the Municipality's policy violates the Alaska Constitution's requirements. Thus, we base our ultimate ruling exclusively on the Alaska Constitution. Moreover, while the parties raise legitimate constitutional concerns under both the privacy and search and seizure clauses of the Alaska Constitution, we think it best to focus our decision on article I, section 14the search and seizure provision. In prior opinions, this court has emphasized that the primary purpose of both Alaska provisions section 14's search and seizure protection and section 22's privacy guarantyis to protect personal privacy and dignity against unwarranted intrusion by the State, or other governmental officials. [14] Accordingly, in cases involving allegedly invalid searches, we have recognized that the standard for determining compliance with Alaska's search and seizure clause is inexorably entwined with the standard of privacy established in article I, section 22. [15] The Municipality policy at issue here requires Police Employees and Fire Fighters members to submit to urinalysis for purposes of disclosing potential substance abuse. The United States Supreme Court has held that urine testing conducted under analogous circumstances qualifies as a search for constitutional purposes: Because it is clear that the collection and testing of urine intrudes upon expectations of privacy that society has long recognized as reasonable, the Federal Courts of Appeals have concluded unanimously, and we agree, that these intrusions must be deemed searches under the Fourth Amendment. [16] Because the policy at issue here unquestionably requires employees to submit to searches, and because Alaska's search and seizure clause incorporates the requirements of Alaska's privacy clause, we can resolve all of the constitutional issues raised in this case by applying the analytical framework governing Alaska's search and seizure provision, article I, section 14. If the disputed policy passes muster under this analysis, it will necessarily also satisfy the requirements of article I, section 22, as well as the corresponding, but more lenient, demands of the United States Constitution. The United States Supreme Court has decided four cases addressing the validity, under the Fourth Amendment, of suspicionless substance abuse testing requirements analogous to those challenged here. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n, [17] the Court upheld Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations that required railroads to administer breath and urine tests to all employees involved in accidents and that authorized railroads to test employees upon reasonable suspicion and after violations of safety rules. [18] The Court held that the testing regulations were constitutional, noting that the railroad industry is pervasively regulated, [19] that the challenged regulations were designed to deter drug and alcohol use, [20] that requiring individualized suspicion would unduly interfere with the railroad's ability to obtain information concerning accident causes, [21] and that the regulations contained adequate safeguards to prevent abuses of discretion by supervisors. [22] Thus, the Court ruled that the compelling governmental interest in protecting public safety outweighed railroad employees' privacy concerns. [23] In National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, [24] a case decided the same day as Skinner, the Court considered regulations that subjected United States Customs Service employees to suspicionless testing upon promotion to (or application for) positions directly involving the interdiction of illegal drugs or positions that required carrying a firearm. Unlike the railroad employees in Skinner, the Customs Service employees in Von Raab had no history of drug and alcohol abuse problems. [25] The Court nonetheless found the regulations to be constitutionally reasonable, noting that Customs Service employees were in the unique position of having easy access to contraband, becoming the targets of bribes, and maintaining national security. [26] The Court thus upheld the testing requirement as justified by special needs: The Government's compelling interests in preventing the promotion of drug users to positions where they might endanger the integrity of our Nation's borders or the life of the citizenry outweigh the privacy interests of those who seek promotion to these positions, who enjoy a diminished expectation of privacy by virtue of the special, and obvious, physical and ethical demands of those positions. [27] In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, [28] the Court upheld a school district policy that required random drug tests of all students wishing to participate in interscholastic athletic activities. [29] In reaching its decision, the Court emphasized that the state has custodial and tutelary power over public school-children. [30] Further, the Court noted, student athletes have a lesser expectation of privacy because often they are required to suit up before practices and events in public locker rooms, undergo a physical exam, carry adequate health insurance, and maintain a minimum grade point average. [31] Relying on evidence indicating that these students encountered particularly high physical risks from drug use, the Vernonia Court concluded that the governmental interest in deterring drug use among student athletes was compelling, whereas the intrusion on their privacy was minimal. [32] The Court thus approved the testing requirement, but cautioned against the assumption that suspicionless drug testing will readily pass constitutional muster in other contexts. [33] More recently, in Chandler v. Miller, [34] the Court held that a Georgia statute requiring candidates for state office to certify that they had tested negative for illegal drugs violated the Fourth Amendment. The Court reasoned that the requirement does not fit within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches. [35] Reviewing its past decisions on suspicionless drug testing, the Court noted that the Georgia law did not deal with a pervasively regulated industry or with a group that had a demonstrated substance abuse problem, as in Skinner; that elective office holders in Georgia were not intimately involved in drug interdiction, as in Von Raab; and that they had little in common with student athletes entrusted to the government's care, as in Vernonia. Finding no special need for suspicionless drug testing, the Court found Georgia's symbolic interest in fighting illegal drugs insufficient to permit deviation from the Fourth Amendment's usual requirements of a warrant supported by probable cause. [36] And most recently, in Ferguson v. City of Charleston , [37] the Court ruled unconstitutional a hospital's suspicionless drug-testing policy. Under the policy at issue in Ferguson, a public hospital in Charleston, with assistance from South Carolina law enforcement authorities, devised a policy of subjecting pregnant patients to suspicionless urine testing for cocaine if they met certain profile criteria. [38] A central requirement of the policy was that hospital personnel would notify the police of patients who tested positive; those patients were arrested and threatened with prosecution unless they submitted to substance abuse education or treatment. [39] In concluding that this policy violated the requirements of the Fourth Amendment, the Court emphasized that a special need that justifies testing in the absence of probable cause and a warrant must be one divorced from the State's general interest in law enforcementthat is, a special need could not be found to exist when the direct and primary purpose of testing patients was the specific purpose of incriminating those patients.  [40] In considering the validity of suspicionless testing in the foregoing cases, the Supreme Court applied a special needs [41] test that Justice Scalia aptly summarized in Vernonia: As the text of the Fourth Amendment indicates, the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of a governmental search is reasonableness. At least in a case such as this, where there was no clear practice, either approving or disapproving the type of search at issue, at the time the constitutional provision was enacted, whether a particular search meets the reasonableness standard `is judged by balancing its intrusion on the individual's Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests.' Where a search is undertaken by law enforcement officials to discover evidence of criminal wrongdoing, this Court has said that reasonableness generally requires the obtaining of a judicial warrant. Warrants cannot be issued, of course, without the showing of probable cause required by the Warrant Clause. But a warrant is not required to establish the reasonableness of all government searches; and when a warrant is not required (and the Warrant Clause therefore not applicable), probable cause is not invariably required either. A search unsupported by probable cause can be constitutional, we have said, when special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable. [42] As this passage from Vernonia recognizes, the special needs test establishes a balance between the individual's Fourth Amendment interests and legitimate governmental interests. In applying this balance, the Vernonia Court divided its consideration of the individual's Fourth Amendment interests into two components: (1) the nature of the privacy interest at issue-or the scope of the individual's reasonable expectation of privacy; and (2) the character of the disputed intrusion. [43] Considering the first component, reasonable expectation of privacy, the Vernonia Court focused on the factual context of the search at issue, as well as its legal context, that is, the legal relationship between the state and the individuals to be searched. [44] Considering the second component, degree of intrusion, the Court recognized that urine testing implicated these privacy interests: the privacy of the tested individual's excretory function and the privacy of the information revealed by the testing process. [45] Reviewing these primary factors, the Vernonia Court concluded that student athletes would reasonably expect a significant degree of intrusion upon their privacy rights and that the degree of intrusion involved in the disputed urine tests was not significant. [46] The Vernonia Court then turned to the government's interest in testing student athletes, closely examining the nature and immediacy of the governmental concern at issue. [47] Finding the nature of the state's interest compelling [48] and the need for protection immediate, [49] the Court drew the balance in favor of suspicionless testing: Taking into account all the factors we have considered abovethe decreased expectation of privacy, the relative unobtrusiveness of the search, and the severity of the need met by the searchwe conclude Vernonia's Policy is reasonable and hence constitutional. [50] In reaching this conclusion, the Court expressly rejected the notion that a testing regime based on reasonable suspicion might be a viable, less intrusive alternative. Among the Court's reasons for finding reasonable suspicion testing impracticable, the foremost was its fear that a suspicion-based regime might actually prove more intrusive: [P]arents who are willing to accept random drug testing for athletes are not willing to accept accusatory drug testing for all students, which transforms the process into a badge of shame. [51] Hence, the Court concluded, [i]n many respects, ... testing based on `suspicion' would not be better, but worse. [52] In the present case, the superior court adopted the Supreme Court's special needs analysis as a guide for its own application of the Alaska Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. Rejecting the argument that a warrantless search must be deemed per se unreasonable under article I, section 14, [53] the court saw the remaining question to be whether the search occasioned by suspicionless drug and alcohol testing is unreasonable. [54] Because it found no relevant definition of reasonable under Alaska law, the superior court proceeded to apply a case-by-case balancing analysis modeled on the special needs test articulated in Skinner, Von Raab, and Vernonia. The court notedcorrectly, we thinkthat [t]his analysis is similar to the one applied to the right to privacy issues. [55] Incorporating its earlier privacy analysis, [56] the superior court upheld the Municipality's suspicionless testing policy as constitutionally reasonable under article I, section 14, and the Fourth Amendment. [57] In challenging the superior court's reasonableness determination, Fire Fighters and Police Employees rely heavily on the traditional presumption that a search conducted without a warrant supported by probable cause is per se unreasonable. [58] In particular, Police Employees insists that the Municipality's policy is invalid because it does not fall within any of the standard exceptions to the warrant requirement for a search and seizure. Yet our case law expressly recognizes that neither the warrant requirement nor the requirement of probable cause invariably governs searches occurring in the context of a heavily regulated activity. [59] And as the superior court properly recognized here, special needs findings are especially appropriate when employment occurs in a highly regulated, safety-essential field of work. [60] Workers employed in such fields necessarily expect reduced privacy in their job-related activities and implicitly agree to a diminished level of privacy when they accept employment. Fire Fighters nevertheless question whether firefighting is a heavily regulated activity, insisting that Fire Fighters are not pervasively regulated for safety. (Emphasis added.) But in our view, the superior court was not clearly erroneous in finding that covered members of both Police Employees and Fire Fighters are subject to extensive safety regulations. And in any event, whether firefighters are pervasively regulated for safety is beside the point. For as the Sixth Circuit recently concluded in rejecting an argument similar to the Fire Fighters' argument here, this view is simply not supported by the relevant authority.... [The] cases demonstrate that the entire focus of the regulations need not be on the employees themselves, or relate to safety per se, in order for the industry to be considered heavily regulated. [61] More pertinent, in our view, is that members of Police Employees and Fire Fighters undeniably hold safety-sensitive positions in extensively regulated fields of activity where they discharge duties fraught with risks of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention can have disastrous consequences. [62] We believe that workers in such positions would reasonably expect that their conditions of employment would subject them to exceptionally close scrutiny. Police Employees and Fire Fighters further allege that, even if the policy's provisions for suspicionless testing are not per se invalid, the superior court applied an improper privacy analysis in concluding that the policy meets article I, section 14's requirement of reasonableness. Insisting that its members have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the collection and testing of their urine, Police Employees contends that the Municipality lacks a sufficiently compelling interest to override this privacy interest and that suspicionless urinalysis fails to provide a close and substantial means of meeting the Municipality's interest. Fire Fighters echoes these arguments, emphasizing its view that there can be no compelling need for suspicionless testing without proof of an existing substance abuse problem: The central objection which the Fire Fighters have to this policy is not one premised upon the intrusiveness of twenty-first century technology or medical science. It is not being subjected to the indignity of compelled urination. It is an objection which has its genesis in the two hundred year old Fourth Amendment: They do not, as individuals or as a group, have a drug problem. There is no compelling need which justifies divergence from the Fourth Amendment's main rule that searches must be made pursuant to individualized suspicion. We find that these arguments are unpersuasive. In Messerli v. State [63] we explained that the right to privacy is not absolute, but is subject to balancing against conflicting rights and interests. We concluded that, where a fundamental right is involved, the state must show a compelling state interest justifying its abridgement. [64] More recently we reiterated the Messerli test in the following way: (1) does the party seeking to come within the protection of the right to [privacy] have a legitimate expectation that the materials or information will not be disclosed? (2) is disclosure nonetheless required to serve a compelling state interest? (3) if so, will the necessary disclosure occur in that manner which is least intrusive with respect to the right to [privacy]? [65] This test eschews absolute measures of privacy; it prescribes the same kind of flexibility that the Supreme Court described in Vernonia: It is a mistake, however, to think that the phrase compelling state interest, in the Fourth Amendment context, describes a fixed, minimum quantum of governmental concern, so that one can dispose of a case by answering in isolation the question: Is there a compelling state interest here? Rather, the phrase describes an interest which appears important enough to justify the particular search at hand, in light of other factors which show the search to be relatively intrusive upon a genuine expectation of privacy. [66] The touchstone of a compelling state interest, then, is simply that [the] right [to privacy] must yield when it interferes in a serious manner with the health, safety, rights and privileges of others or with the public welfare. [67] We therefore decline to hold that a history of substance abuse problems is invariably necessary to establish a special need for suspicionless testing in situations involving heavily regulated, safety-sensitive job duties. [68] Applying the flexible Messerli standard to the case at hand, moreover, we hold that the superior court did not err, for the most part, in concluding that a special need for testing existed here. The superior court found that the Municipality's interest in ensuring public safety is sufficiently compelling to outweigh the relatively modestthough admittedly not insignificantintrusion on privacy that occurs under the disputed Municipality policy when Police Employees and Fire Fighters members are subjected to suspicionless urine testing upon application for employment, upon promotion, demotion or transfer, or after a vehicular accident. We agree with these findings. [69] We further agree with the superior court's finding that the Municipality's policy reflects a close and substantial means-to-end fit in these situations. [70] In such cases, thencases when suspicionless testing occurs upon application for employment, upon promotion, demotion or transfer, and after vehicular accidentswe conclude that the balance of individual versus governmental interests tips decidedly in the Municipality's favor. [71] In our view, however, the balance shifts in the case of an indefinite requirement of random testing. [72] The policy's provision for ongoing random urinalysis testing alters the special needs balance between individual privacy interests and competing governmental interests in at least three significant ways. First, random testing places increased demands on employees' reasonable expectations of privacy. Because the policy's provision for random testing could subject employees to unannounced probing throughout the course of their employment, the tests are peculiarly capable of being viewed as unexpected intrusions on privacy. [73] For example, it might seem manifestly unreasonable for any person applying for a safety-sensitive position in a heavily regulated field of activity not to anticipateand implicitly agree toa probing inquiry into the applicant's capacity to perform job-related duties; the same would hold true for any employee who might be promoted, demoted, transferred, or become involved in a job-related accident. But a job applicant or employee who anticipated such inquiries might nevertheless expect not to be subjected to a continuous and unrelenting government scrutiny that exposes the employee to unannounced testing at virtually any time. Such expectations cannot be so readily dismissed as patently unreasonable. Second, random testing is more intrusive: it subjects employees to a greater degree of subjective intrusion. An unannounced test's added element of fear and surprise, [74] and its unsettling show of authority, [75] make random testing qualitatively more intrusive than testing that is triggered by predictable, job-related occurrences such as promotion, demotion, and transfer. Moreover, an ongoing requirement of random testing is more intrusive because its reach is broader than that of a requirement that attaches upon application, promotion, or transfer. In distinguishing the facts of its prior special needs cases from those involved in the hospital testing situation at issue in Ferguson v. City of Charleston , the Supreme Court commented that [t]he use of an adverse test result to disqualify one from eligibility for a particular benefit, such as a promotion or an opportunity to participate in an extracurricular activity, involves a less serious intrusion on privacy than the unauthorized dissemination of such results to third parties. [76] Of course, the Court made this comment in passing, and the testing regime challenged in Ferguson bears no similarity to the policy at issue here. But the Court's reference to the reduced intrusiveness of tests designed to determine eligibility for a particular benefit nonetheless evinces its recognition that suspicionless testing requirements become progressively more intrusive as they place increasingly valuable rights in jeopardy. Third, a requirement of random testing impacts the balance between individual and governmental interests by reducing the immediacy of the government's need for the disclosed information. Unlike suspicionless testing occasioned by application, promotion, demotion, transfer, or vehicular accident, the policy's random test provision has no logical nexus to any job-related occurrence. Particularly in the absence of a documented history of substance abuse, then, the Municipality can claim no immediate, job-contextual need to know the results of a randomly drawn urinalysis; it can only claim a more attenuated, institutional interest in checking. Considering these subtle yet significant attributes of random testing, we conclude that the Municipality has failed to meet its burden of establishing a special need for its random testing provision. In so concluding, we note that the United States Supreme Court has never approved an open ended random-testing regime like the one at issue here. [77] Indeed, Von Raab spoke favorably of a suspicionless testing regime that applied only upon transfer or promotion precisely because it lacked a random, unannounced component: Indeed, these procedures significantly minimize the program's intrusion on privacy interests. Only employees who have been tentatively accepted for promotion or transfer to one of the three categories of covered positions are tested, and applicants know at the outset that a drug test is a requirement of those positions. Employees are also notified in advance of the scheduled sample collection, thus reducing to a minimum any unsettling show of authority. [78] And notably, at least one federal circuit court has expressly relied on the absence of a random testing component as a basis for approving a suspicionless testing policy. [79] It is thus uncertain whether the policy's random testing provision would pass muster under the Fourth Amendment. But we need not speculate on this issue. Because we address the policy's validity under the more protective requirements of the Alaska Constitution, we conclude on the present record-which reveals no documented history of substance abuse problems among Police Employees or Fire Fighters members and fails to establish that the policy's goals will not be adequately addressed by its remaining suspicionless testing provisionsthat the random testing provision is unreasonable and therefore violates article I, section 14 of the Alaska Constitution.