Court Opinion

ID: 9486922
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:04:14.360037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:01.011913
License: Public Domain

WALD, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
Whenever individual liberty is at risk of being jettisoned in combatting a national crisis, courts have a special obligation to stand stubborn in requiring that the sacrifice be necessary. Otherwise, our Constitution and those it protects will surely suffer. See Ko-rematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214, 65 S.Ct. 193, 89 L.Ed. 194 (1944); Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494, 71 S.Ct. 857, 95 L.Ed. 1137 (1951). For even after the crisis subsides — as it inevitably does — the constitutional fallout lingers on and takes a creeping toll. We cannot count ourselves victorious on any front, in any war, unless our Constitution survives the battle.
Caught in the cross-fire of our nation’s “war on drugs,” the Fourth Amendment is in a precarious position today. As written, it provides:
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.
U.S. Const, amend. IV. Although the “probable-cause standard ‘is peculiarly related to criminal investigations,’ ” the Supreme Court has recognized that when the government requires its employees to submit to drug tests, it may do so only within the confines of the Fourth Amendment. National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 667, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 1391-92, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989) (quoting South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U.S. 364, 370 n. 5, 96 S.Ct. 3092, 3097 n. 5, 49 L.Ed.2d 1000 (1976)). See id. at 665, 109 S.Ct. at 1390-91. Nonetheless, in Von Raab and its companion case, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Association, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989), the Supreme Court upheld drug testing of certain federal employees despite the absence of either warrant or individualized suspicion. The urinalysis at issue in Skinner was performed on certain railroad employees following all major train accidents and whenever any train incident resulted in the death of an on-duty railroad employee. 489 U.S. at 608-12, 109 S.Ct. at 1408-12. In Von Raab, the United States Customs Service (“Customs” or “Service”) had proposed to perform drug tests on all employees prior to their voluntary promotion to positions in which the employee would (1) be directly involved in *631drug interdiction or enforcement of related laws, (2) carry a firearm, or (3) handle “classified” material. 489 U.S. at 660-61, 109 S.Ct. at 1387-88.
While the Court had no doubt that such drug tests “must be deemed searches under the Fourth Amendment,” Skinner, 489 U.S. at 617,109 S.Ct. at 1413, it nonetheless found the tests passed constitutional muster. The Court reasoned:
[W]here 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.
Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 665-66, 109 S.Ct. at 1390-91 (citing Skinner, 489 U.S. at 619-20, 109 S.Ct. at 1414-15). In striking this balance in Von Raab, the Court recognized three government interests: protecting the safety of the public from dangers posed by armed Customs officers, protecting the integrity of front-line interdiction personnel, and protecting truly sensitive information. This case involves only the last interest.
The Court recognized that the government had a “compelling interest in protecting truly sensitive information from those who, ‘under compulsion of circumstance or for other reasons, ... might compromise [such] information.’ ” Id. at 677, 109 S.Ct. at 1397 (quoting Dep’t of Navy v. Egan, 484 U.S. 518, 528, 108 S.Ct. 818, 824, 98 L.Ed.2d 918 (1988)). It noted that
employees who seek promotions to positions where they would handle sensitive information can be required to submit to a urine test under the Service’s screening program, especially if the positions covered under this category require background investigations, medical examinations, or other intrusions that may be expected to diminish their expectations of privacy in respect of a urinalysis test.
Id, (citing Dep’t of Navy, 484 U.S. at 528, 108 S.Ct. at 824). However, because the Court could not balance the privacy expectations against the government’s interest based on the record as it existed then, it remanded the ease:
Upon remand, the Court of Appeals should-examine the criteria used by the Service in determining what materials are classified and in deciding whom to test under this rubric. In assessing the reasonableness of requiring tests of these employees, the court should also consider pertinent information bearing upon the employees’ privacy expectations, as well as the supervision to which these employees are already subject.
Id. at 678, 109 S.Ct. at 1397. The Supreme Court has never struck this balance since.
In our own applications of the principle enunciated .in Von Raab and Skinner, this circuit has inched its way ever farther from the core holdings in those two cases, repeatedly mollified by the fact that only a minuscule step extra was needed to arrive at an outcome arguably supported by precedent. See Hartness v. Bush, 919 F.2d 170 (D.C.Cir.1990), cert. denied, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 2890, 115 L.Ed.2d 1055 (1991); American Fed’n of Gov’t Employees v. Skinner, 885 F.2d 884, 891 (D.C.Cir.1989) (“AFGE ”), cert. denied, 495 U.S. 923, 110 S.Ct. 1960, 109 L.Ed.2d 321 (1990); Harmon v. Thornburgh, 878 F.2d 484 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1056, 110 S.Ct. 865,107 L.Ed.2d 949 (1990). As a prescient Justice Marshall wrote in his Skinner dissent: “The majority purports to limit its decision to postaccident testing of workers in ‘safety-sensitive’ jobs, [Skinner, 489 U.S.] at - 620 [109 S.Ct. at 1414-15], much as it limits its holding in the companion case to the testing of transferees to jobs involving drug interdiction or the use of firearms. [Von Raab, 489 U.S.] at 664[, 109 S.Ct. at 1390], But the damage done to the Fourth Amendment is not so easily cabined.” 489 U.S. at 636, 109 S.Ct. at 1423 (Marshall, J., dissenting).
In Harmon we upheld as constitutional the drug testing of Department of Justice (“DOJ”) employees who had access to top secret national security information. The testing involved in that case was performed randomly on incumbent attorneys. Unlike the pre-voluntary-promotion tests in Von *632Raab, the DOJ attorney with top secret security clearance was not at liberty to remain at her current job and forgo a promotion as a means of avoiding the incursion on her privacy. Thus, the covered employee in Harmon was at risk of losing not only the prospect of a promotion, but her present job as well,1 and the employee would never be put on notice that a drug test was imminent.2 While we recognized the “relevanfce]” of these distinguishing factors in the overall balance, we ultimately rejected the notion that “this aspect of the program requires us to undertake a fundamentally different analysis from that pursued by the Supreme Court in Von Raab.” 878 F.2d at 489 (emphasis in original). Accord, AFGE, 885 F.2d at 891. Applying that analysis, we found that “[wjhatever ‘truly sensitive’ information includes ... it encompasses top secret national security information,” and concluded that under Von Raab the “government may properly make testing a requirement for holding a top secret security clearance.” Id. at 491-92.
At the same time, however, Harmon struck down the DOJ’s related attempt to test all federal prosecutors or all federal employees with access to grand jury proceedings. We held that truly sensitive information
cannot include all information which is confidential or closed to public view. A very wide range of government employees — including clerks, typists, or messengers — will potentially have access to information of this sort.... The fact that the employees covered by the Department’s drug testing regulations deal with confidential information therefore does not distinguish them from private attorneys, or from government employees generally.
878 F.2d at 492 (emphasis in original). The court warned that “caution should be used in approving this [information protection] justification for testing.” Id.
Next, we held that Department of Transportation mail van operators with “secret or top secret security clearance and regular access to classified information” could constitutionally be subjected to random drug testing, especially in light of the fact that tested employees “work in settings other than the ‘more traditional office environments’ where ‘drug use is, presumably, more easily detected by means other than urine testing.’” AFGE, 885 F.2d at 893 (quoting Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 674, 109 S.Ct. at 1395, and Harmon, 878 F.2d at 488). Finally, a divided panel of this court held more generally that the difference between top secret and secret security clearance holders “is not significant enough to tip the constitutional scales against [conducting random urinalysis drug] testing” on Executive Office of the President employees with “secret” national security clearances. Hartness v. Bush, 919 F.2d 170, 174 (D.C.Cir.1990) (Mikva, J., concurring). See also id. (“I do not think it necessary ... to go beyond this narrow holding.”). While we have thus taken significant strides toward upholding suspicionless drug tests aimed at protecting sensitive information, my review of the easelaw has revealed no decision by a federal court of appeals — and the government has pointed to none — upholding urinalysis drug tests for the purpose of protecting information that is not classified as “secret” or “top secret” pursuant to Executive Order No. 12,356, 47 Fed.Reg. 14,874 (Apr. 6, 1982).3
*633In the instant appeal the government’s need to test Customs employees is far less compelling than in prior cases. Basically, the majority seems to say that access to any information that might prove useful to a drug dealer justifies random urinalysis. The information that Customs seeks to protect with the help of urinalysis is not classified under Executive Order No. 12,356 at all, nor do the Customs employees here enjoy secret or top secret security clearances. The employees at issue here work in traditional office environments, presumably permitting the kind of day-to-day monitoring that would reveal a pattern of drug abuse constituting a security threat, and the government readily admits that “a substantial population of Customs officers require access to TECS II for reasons unrelated to drug enforcement.” Joint Appendix (“J.A.”) 419.
Moreover, Customs seeks to test not only job applicants, but incumbent job holders, and it proposes to test them randomly without notice. But nothing in the obvious ethical or physical demands of these employees’ jobs would indicate to them that they should expect random intrusions on their privacy. Cf. Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 679, 109 S.Ct. at 1398 (noting that intrusions into employee’s privacy were to be expected due to “the special, and obvious, physical and ethical demands of those positions”). Indeed, the sole factor reducing these employees’ privacy expectations is a one-time background check. By relying on such a background check alone as reducing an employee’s expectation of privacy to the point of permitting the intrusive urinalysis, the majority effectively makes background checks simply an added cost for the government to insure that random drug testing will not be rejected as too invasive by courts.
Finally, I do not believe that the record permits us to decide that, under these circumstances, it would be impracticable to require Customs to develop individualized suspicion prior to testing any given employee. True, the Supreme Court noted that “ ‘[t]he reasonableness of any particular government activity does not necessarily or invariably turn on the existence of alternative “less intrusive” means.’” Skinner, 489 U.S. at 629 n. 9, 109 S.Ct. at 1419-20 n. 9 (quoting Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 647, 103 S.Ct. 2605, 2610, 77 L.Ed.2d 65 (1983)). But while we have followed Skinner’s rejection of a least intrusive means requirement, we have at the same time recognized that under certain circumstances, such as employment in a traditional office environment, drug use might be easily detected without intrusive random urinalysis. Compare National Fed’n of Fed. Employees v. Cheney, 884 F.2d 603, 610-11 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1056, 110 S.Ct. 864, 107 L.Ed.2d 948 (1990), with id. at 614. Indeed, this criterion of alternative means of supervision was recognized explicitly by the Court in Von Raab. See 489 U.S. at 674, 109 S.Ct. at 1395 (“it is not feasible to subject [front-line drug interdiction] employees and their work product to the kind of day-to-day scrutiny that is the norm in more traditional office environments”); id. at 678, 109 S.Ct. at 1397 (remand with instruction that “court should also consider pertinent information bearing upon the employees’ privacy expectations, as well as the supervision to which these employees are already subject”). Nothing in the record before us indicates that the government is incapable of effectively monitoring these employees at the workplace to detect serious drug problems.
Similarly, Customs has not presented any evidence concerning alternative methods of storing and securing the information so as to minimize the number of employees it must test. Even putting the general question of a Fourth Amendment “less intrusive means” inquiry to one side, cf. Nadine Strossen, The Fourth Amendment in the Balance: Accurately Setting the Scales through the Least Intrusive Alternative Analysis, 63 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 1173 (1988), the instant situation merits more than a nod in the direction of attempting to minimize the user pool of truly sensitive information so . as to cut down on unnecessary searches.' This criterion, too, has been implicitly recognized as significant by the Von Raab Court. See 489 U.S. at 678, 109 S.Ct. at 1397 (remanding -with instructions to “examine the criteria used by the Service in determining what materials are classified and in deciding whom to test under this rubric”). While perhaps in the case of *634information classified as “top secret” we may presume that access to such information is not freely given without cause, where non-elassified information is at stake, we must ask more incisively whether a pattern of broad access does not undermine the government’s claim to the information’s sensitivity. See Harmon, 878 F.2d at 492. Although this suit concerns only the 2,194 NTEU members who are covered by the drug testing plan, nationwide approximately 12,000 Customs employees, including secretaries, clerks, and typists, with access to the database in question will be subject to testing. Yet the present record contains only a bald assertion by Customs that “it would be extremely difficult, cumbersome and expensive to attempt to segregate computer access to information specifically related to drug interdiction from access to other enforcement related data in the system.” J.A. 402. To be sure, in today’s information age, where access to data is often only a few keystrokes away, heightened vigilance is required in the protection of the government’s secrets. However, we must equally ensure that the burdens of secrecy are carried in the first instance by the government itself, e.g., by appropriately restricting employees’ access to sensitive information they do not need or by policing the data requests that are ultimately made. The government may not simply throw up its hands and err on the side of liberally granting its employees access to a wide range of data with the effect of losing the Fourth Amendment somewhere in cyberspace.
I am aware that Von Raab approved a drug testing program without any documentation that drug using Customs officials were the source of information leaks. See Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 683, 109 S.Ct. at 1400 (Scalia, J., dissenting). So it may be argued that we cannot dismiss the government’s asserted need simply on the basis that it has not offered a single documented instance of an integrity violation of the kind feared here. But apart from the inevitable doubts this lack of evidence raises about the need for such widespread testing, we have been instructed by the Supreme Court that we must consider “the criteria used by the Service in determining what materials are classified [or considered truly sensitive] and in deciding whom to test under this rubric.” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 678, 109 S.Ct. at 1397. We are further charged with “assessing the reasonableness of requiring tests of these employees, [by] ... considering] pertinent information bearing upon the employees’ privacy expectations, as well as the supervision to which these employees are already subject.” Id. Ultimately, the task we face is 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.” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 665-66, 109 S.Ct. at 1390-91 (citing Skinner, 489 U.S. at 619-20, 109 S.Ct. at 1414-15).
In applying the Von Raab framework to this case, it is immediately apparent that the drug testing program here is a far cry indeed from the one-time, pre-voluntary-transfer test at issue in Von Raab. The urinalysis to be conducted here is performed randomly on a large pool of incumbent employees who work in traditional office environments in a wide range of positions with no expectation of repeated intrusions into their privacy. Without an ounce of evidence of a prior loss of integrity akin to the one it now seeks to prevent, Customs sets out to test its employees in order to protect information that it does not deem sensitive enough to merit inclusion in any category of classified material. Certainly when dealing with information to which the government has granted such wide access, we may not, as the majority does, simply presume that any approach short of drug testing to safeguard the information at hand is too cumbersome, that any further restriction on access to sensitive information is impracticable, or that day-to-day monitoring in a traditional office environment to detect drug use is unfeasible. If balancing the individual’s expectations of privacy against the interests of the government is to have any meaning at all as a way of assuming the Fourth Amendment remains alive and well in this field and if the Supreme Court’s mandated judicial determination of the im-practieality of requiring individualized suspicion is to retain any semblance of reality, the government must bear the burden of demon-*635stating that other less intrusive efforts at protecting nonclassified information in an office environment have been explored and found inadequate. The government has not done so in this case. Without any such assurances, we should not blindly permit our constitutional shield against an ever-inquisitive government to be further compromised by a single-minded dedication to fighting the drug war. Because the record as it currently stands does not indicate that the Fourth Amendment balance which we must so carefully strike tips in favor of the government, I dissent.

. As we noted in Harmon, "[t]he Supreme Court has recognized in other contexts that '[d]enial of a future employment opportunity is not as intrusive as loss of an existing job.' ” 878 F.2d at 489 n. 6 (quoting Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Educ., 476 U.S. 267, 282-83, 106 S.Ct. 1842, 1851-52, 90 L.Ed.2d 260 (1986) (plurality)). Cf. Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 672 n. 2, 109 S.Ct. at 1394 n. 2 (“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.”).

. Both in Skinner, 489 U.S. at 622, 109 S.Ct. at 1416, and Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 672 n. 2, 109 S.Ct. at 1394 n. 2, the Supreme Court emphasized that the drug testing at issue in those cases provided sufficient notice to the employees and would not catch them by surprise. In Skinner, the Court specifically mentioned that such notice justified dispensing with the Fourth Amendment's usual warrant requirement. 489 U.S. at 621-24, 109 S.Ct. at 1415-17.

. National Treasury Employees Union v. Hallett, 756 F.Supp. 947 (E.D.La.1991), is the one case upholding such testing to protect information classified only as “confidential.”