Opinion ID: 12443
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The Currently Existing Law

Text: 99 The Supreme Court in its most recent urinalysis drug test case, reaffirmed that the Fourth Amendment requires the government to respect the right of people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable searches and seizures, and that to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, a search ordinarily must be based on individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. Chandler v. Miller, --- U.S. ----, ----, 117 S.Ct. 1295, 1298, 137 L.Ed.2d 513 (1997)(citing Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564, (1995)). However, in limited circumstances, where the privacy interests implicated by the search are minimal, and where an important governmental interest furthered by the intrusion would be placed in jeopardy by a requirement of individualized suspicion, a search may be reasonable despite the absence of such suspicion. Chandler, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1298, (quoting Skinner, 489 U.S. at 624, 109 S.Ct. at 1417); see also Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 665-66, 109 S.Ct. at 1390-91. 100 The court clearly indicated that Skinner and Von Raab must be read in their unique contexts. Skinner concerned Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations that required blood and urine tests of rail employees involved in train wrecks. The FRA adopted the drug-testing program in response to evidence of on the job drug and alcohol abuse by railroad train crews, the enormous safety hazard posed by such abuse, and the documented nexus between impaired employees and the incidence of train accidents. Factors tending to offset the privacy concerns were that the regulations reduced intrusiveness; the fact that the industry was regulated pervasively for safety diminished privacy expectations; the surpassing safety risks and interests; the illegal drug and alcohol use by rail employees could cause great human loss before signs of impairment were noticeable to supervisors; the program helped obtain invaluable information about major train wreck causes and; an individualized suspicion requirement in the chaotic aftermath of a train accident would impede detection of causation. See Chandler, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1301. 101 In Von Raab, drug interdiction had become the Customs Service's primary enforcement mission; the covered posts directly involved drug interdiction or otherwise required Customs officers to carry firearms; the employees had access to vast sources of contraband; officers had been targets and some had succumbed to bribery; and it was not feasible to subject Customs Service employees to the kind of day to day scrutiny that is the norm in more traditional work environments. Chandler, --- U.S. at ---- - ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1301-02. 102 In Chandler the Supreme Court also pointed out the set of unique circumstances in Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995), under which it had sustained a random sample drug-testing program for high school students engaged in inter-scholastic athletics, with written consent of each athlete's parents, during the season of each sport: public school systems bear large responsibilities as guardian and tutor of children entrusted to their care; there was an immediate crisis caused by a sharp increase in drug use in the school district; student athletes were leaders of the drug culture; students within the school environment have a lesser expectation of privacy than members of the population generally; it is important to deter drug use by school children and to reduce the risk of injury caused by drug use among student athletes. Chandler, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1302. 103 According to the Chandler court, Skinner, Von Raab and Vernonia establish that the government's proffered special need for drug testing must be substantial--important enough to override the individual's acknowledged privacy interest, sufficiently vital to suppress the Fourth amendment's normal requirement of individualized suspicion. Chandler, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1303. The Supreme Court in Chandler rejected the state's invitation to apply a more deferential framework, stating that [o]ur guides remain Skinner, Von Raab, and Vernonia. Id. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1302. 104 Before Chandler, it was already very clear that the present case does not fit into the Skinner-Von Raab-Vernonia Special Needs category. For the reasons previously discussed, the present case is clearly distinguishable from other cases allowing suspicionless searches or seizures in terms of the nature of the intrusion, the magnitude of risks to human lives and property, and/or the practicability of application of the reasonable individualized suspicion test. Chandler confirms, however, that, in the present case, the governmentally proffered special need for suspicionless drug testing has not been demonstrated to be real, substantial or sufficiently vital to suppress the Fourth Amendment's normal requirement of individualized suspicion[,] Id. at ----, ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1300, 1303, when measured by [o]ur guides ... Skinner, Von Raab, and Vernonia. Id. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1303. 105 First, the state government in the present case has not established by legislated law or legislatively authorized government regulation any need, system or procedure for the suspicionless drug testing of physicians in hospital residency programs. In Skinner, Von Raab and Vernonia, the urinalysis tests were administered pursuant to well defined programs established by governmentally promulgated regulations or written policy statements based on documented needs, not by purely ad hoc decisions guided only by untrammeled supervisory discretion, as in the present case. In Vernonia, the drug testing was also authorized by the written consent of the parents of each student-athlete. 106 Second, there has been no demonstration here that public safety is genuinely in jeopardy or that there is a critical and immediate need to suppress the Fourth Amendment's normal requirement of individualized suspicion. 107 Unlike the situation presented in Skinner, the record here indicates that neither the government nor the medical school had established a drug-testing program of any kind for resident physicians. Consequently, there were no regulations, guidelines or procedures established for drug testing. Moreover, prior to the state officer's drug-test order, the medical school had undertaken no systematic study of drug abuse by residents. Consequently, the school had not established a documented link between drug abuse by residents and any medical accident. Further, the record does not reflect that residents participate in an industry that is regulated pervasively to ensure safety; the practice of medicine, like that of law, is a profession, which is largely self-governed by its own ethical and disciplinary system. There was no indication of a surpassing safety interest in guarding against the risk that residents would cause loss of large numbers of human lives and millions of dollars of property damage due to drug use before any signs of impairment would become noticeable to supervisors. Of course, because there was no drug-testing program and no history of drug-related medical accidents in the residency program, it cannot be argued that any valuable medical data had been derived from urinalysis. There was no evidence that the individualized suspicion requirement for a drug test of resident physicians would seriously impede the employer's ability to identify and eliminate or rehabilitate drug-impaired residents. 108 By the same token, the present case, in contrast with Von Raab, does not relate to the use of drug tests as a condition of promotion or transfer. Also, of course, it does not involve employees exposed to the vicissitudes of illicit drug smuggling and interdiction, firearm usage, exposure to narcotics sources, bribery, and blackmail. 109 Finally, the present case, which is quite distinguishable from Vernonia, involves free adult physicians working and training in a hospital resident program, not high school and junior high school student athletes to whom the public school system owed a duty as guardian and tutor to protect from moral corruption and physical injury due to drug use during an immediate crisis caused by a sharp increase in drug use in the school district. 110 In sum, under the current law, as under the clearly established law at the time of the state officer mandated drug test, the record in the present case is notably lacking in the presentation of a concrete danger demanding departure from the Fourth Amendment's main rule that, to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, a search must be based on individualized suspicion. See Chandler, --- U.S. at ----, 117 S.Ct. at 1303. 111 Issues 2. and 3. The District Court Correctly Denied the State Officers' Motions For Summary Judgment And Judgment As A Matter Of Law. The Officers Were Not Entitled To Qualified Immunity Because A Reasonable Officer Would Have Known The Drug-Test Order Was Unlawful Due To An Absence Of Reasonable Individualized Suspicion. 112 Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any state, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress. Therefore, when a state officer acts under a state law in a manner violative of the Federal Constitution, he comes in conflict with the superior authority of that Constitution, and he is in that case stripped of his official or representative character and is subjected in his person to the consequences of his individual conduct. Scheuer v. Rhodes, 416 U.S. 232, 237, 94 S.Ct. 1683, 1686, 40 L.Ed.2d 90 (1974) Although § 1983 on its face admits of no immunities, the Supreme Court has read it in harmony with general principles of tort immunities and defenses rather than in derogation of them. Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 418, 96 S.Ct. 984, 989, 47 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976) In the absence of congressional directions to the contrary, however, it is untenable to draw a distinction for purposes of immunity law between suits brought against state officials under § 1983 and suits brought directly under the Constitution against federal officials. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 340, n. 2, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 1095, n. 2, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986); Butz v. Economou, 438 U.S. 478, 504, 98 S.Ct. 2894, 2909, 57 L.Ed.2d 895 (1978); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818, n. 30, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 2738, n. 30, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). 113 The Supreme Court cases have generally provided government officials performing discretionary functions with a qualified immunity, shielding them from civil damages liability as long as their actions could reasonably have been thought consistent with the rights they are alleged to have violated. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 638-39, 107 S.Ct. 3034, 3038-39, 97 L.Ed.2d 523 (1987) (citing Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 106 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed.2d 271 (1986)); Mitchell v. Forsyth, 472 U.S. 511, 105 S.Ct. 2806, 86 L.Ed.2d 411 (1985); Davis v. Scherer, 468 U.S. 183, 104 S.Ct. 3012, 82 L.Ed.2d 139 (1984); Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 102 S.Ct. 2727, 73 L.Ed.2d 396 (1982). Whether an official protected by qualified immunity may be held personally liable for an allegedly unlawful official action generally turns on the objective legal reasonableness of the action, assessed in light of the legal rules that were clearly established at the time it was taken. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. at 639, 107 S.Ct. at 3038 (quoting Harlow, 457 U.S. at 818-19, 102 S.Ct. at 2738-39). 114 Moreover, the right that the official is alleged to have violated must have been clearly established in a sufficiently particularized and relevant sense: The contours of the right must be sufficiently clear that a reasonable official would understand that what he is doing violates that right. This is not to say that an official action is protected by qualified immunity unless the very action in question has previously been held unlawful, see Mitchell, supra, 472 U.S., at 535, n. 12, 105 S.Ct., at 2820, n. 12; but it is to say that in the light of pre-existing law the unlawfulness must be apparent. See, e.g., Malley, supra, 475 U.S., at 344-345, 106 S.Ct., at 1097-1098; Mitchell, supra, 472 U.S., at 528, 105 S.Ct., at 2816; Davis, supra, 468 U.S., at 191, 195, 104 S.Ct., at 3017, 3019. Anderson, 483 U.S. at 640, 107 S.Ct. at 3039. (emphasis added). 115 As demonstrated above, the clearly established law at the time the state officers ordered the physician resident-trainee to submit to an urinalysis drug test required that the officers have individualized reasonable suspicion that she had used illegal drugs and that evidence of such usage could be detected in her urine. Therefore, the contours of the physician-resident's Fourth Amendment right were sufficiently clear that reasonable officials would understand that before ordering the collection and analysis of her urine, on pain of terminating her employment and residency training, they must have reasonable individualized suspicion, i.e., something more substantial than inarticulate hunches, that she had consumed drugs and that evidence of that usage could be detected by urinalysis. 116 Applying these principles, in the light of the pre-existing law a reasonable official would understand that ordering her to submit to urinalysis violated her right to privacy because the meager information available could not give rise to a reasonable individualized suspicion that her urine contained the evidence of illegal drug usage. The doctors on the scene when she slapped the unruly, amphetamine-drugged patient immediately after he spat in her face did not think her reaction was drug induced or influenced. Approximately one month elapsed between this incident and the officers' order that she submit to a monitored urinalysis test or be removed from the residency program. The record is devoid of any evidence even slightly suggesting drug usage by her between the slapping incident and the officers' drug test ultimatum. Under all of the circumstances, the absence of any basis for reasonable individualized suspicion and the resulting unlawfulness of the officers' drug test order were clearly apparent. 117 Issue 4. The Officers Failed To Preserve The Issue Of Insufficiency Of Evidence To Support A Punitive Damages Award For Our Review. 118 A post-verdict motion under Rule 50(b) for judgment as a matter of law cannot be made unless a previous motion for judgment as a matter of law was made by the moving party at the close of all the evidence. Rule 50(b); In re Owners of Harvey Oil Center, 788 F.2d 275, 278 (5th Cir.1986); Quinn v. Southwest Wood Products, Inc., 597 F.2d 1018, 1024 (5th Cir.1979). Because the defendants-appellants failed to move at the close of all the evidence for judgment as a matter of law on the issue of the sufficiency of evidence as to punitive damages, that issue has not been preserved for our review.