Court Opinion

ID: 9490176
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:35:05.075844+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:56.324993
License: Public Domain

ROGERS, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
Given the precedents in which “this circuit has inched its way even farther from the core holdings in [Von Raab and Skinner1], repeatedly mollified by the fact that only a minuscule extra step was needed to arrive an at outcome arguably supported by precedent,” National Treasury Employees Union v. United States Customs Serv., 27 F.3d 623, 631 (D.C.Cir.1994) (“NTEU’) (Wald, J. dissenting), the court’s conclusion in the instant case is predictable. Cf. Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 680-87, 109 S.Ct. at 1398-1402 (Scalia, J., dissenting); Hartness v. Bush, 919 F.2d 170, 180 (D.C.Cir.1990) (Edwards, J., dissenting), cert. denied, 501 U.S. 1251, 111 S.Ct. 2890, 115 L.Ed.2d 1055 (1991). Following the Supreme Court in Von Raab, this court has already accepted the proposition that drug users pose a security risk by reason of their increased susceptibility to blackmail or bribery. Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 669-70, 109 S.Ct. at 1392-93; NTEU, 27 F.3d at 629. Given the unique access to areas within the White House security perimeter that an Old Executive OfSce Building (“OEOB”) pass provides, the court could scarcely avoid concluding that the drug testing program of the Executive Office of the President (“EOP”) is reasonably related to the goal of preventing harm to the President and Vice President. Despite the security procedures in place at the OEOB2 *808and the absence of evidence of a specific threat caused by a drug-using employee of the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”),3 the devastating impact that an assassination of the President would have on this country and its people, and people and nations throughout the world, weighs in favor of special precautions. See Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 674-75 & n. 3, 109 S.Ct. at 1395 & n. 3.
That is not the end of our inquiry, however. In Von Raab, the Supreme Court instructed that “where a Fourth Amendment intrusion serves special governmental needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, the court must 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.” Id. at 665-66, 109 S.Ct. at 1390-91; see also Skinner, 489 U.S. at 619-20, 109 S.Ct. at 1414 — 15. The question here is whether the privacy interests of OMB employees holding OEOB passes in not being subjected to random urine testing outweighs the possible risk of physical harm to the President and Vice President.
It is undeniable that protection of the President and Vice President is of paramount importance. The government has a compelling interest not only in protecting the lives of the President and Vice President, but in providing them a safe working environment where they can carry out their official duties without fear of physical danger.4 Still, some governmental actions in the name of Presidential security would not pass constitutional muster. New today would argue, for example, that the government could conduct a random suspicionless search of an OMB employee’s home merely on the off chance that the search might reveal evidence of a threat to the President.
I write separately, therefore, to emphasize the limits of our holding in applying Von Raab’s balancing test to a threat that relates to the situs of employment and not the nature of the job itself, and to make clear that under Von Raab even a governmental interest of the most compelling order must still be weighed against the competing privacy interests at stake. Three main factors influenced our holding and help define its limits: (1) the need to enable the President and Vice President to do their jobs; (2) the access needs of and consequences for OMB passholders; and (3) the nature of the drug testing program.
. First, the factual setting itself limits the holding. The OEOB is directly adjacent to the White House and inside the White House security perimeter. The security perimeter is marked by a fence that runs along Pennsylvania Avenue, Seventeenth Street, East Executive Avenue, and across the front of the White House in Northwest Washington, D.C. Apart from the Executive Mansion itself, the OEOB is the only building inside this perimeter. This is the area where the President and Vice President regularly work; it is where they regularly hold meetings and receive foreign dignitaries and members of Congress; it is the area where the President and his family live. In other words, for the President and Vice President to perform their jobs in a reasonable fashion, heightened security measures may be justified in this well-defined and limited geographic area.
Second, because senior officials in the • OMB have their offices in the OEOB, OMB employees whose own offices are located outside of the security perimeter may from *809time to time be required to come within the perimeter in order to perform their jobs. Consequently, OMB requires that all of its employees — except a small number of temporary student employees — have passes that give them free access to the OEOB. All of these employees are designated for random drug testing, notwithstanding the fact that many of them, like appellees, do not have access to any secret or top secret national security information.5 The OMB passhold-ers have continual access to the OEOB that affords them unique vantage points to observe the President and Vice President. Once inside the OEOB, OMB employees have an unrestricted view of the West Wing and grounds of the White House, as well as the opportunity to track the comings and goings of the President and Vice President. While this information is not “secret” in the literal sense of the word, it is “sensitive” information that is not readily available to the general public, and makes OEOB passhold-ers, albeit in a limited way, analogous to government employees whose access to secret or top secret information causes them to be subject to random drug testing.6 See Hartness, 919 F.2d at 172; Harmon v. Thornburgh, 878 F.2d 484, 491 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 1056, 110 S.Ct. 865, 107 L.Ed.2d 949 (1990).
The access granted to OMB employees is not temporary, as is true for interns, or limited by a discrete task, as would be true of persons repairing a broken fixture, for example. Passholders also have authority to obtain access for others into OEOB, an authority non-passholders lack. While the purpose of such entries is limited to scheduled meetings, the passholders’ authority is nonetheless unique as compared to others who have access to the OEOB. Here, the government has reasonably determined that appellees need this authority to perform their duties effectively, and that, consequently, they must be subject to the heightened security procedures that apply inside White House security perimeter.7
the extent to which the positions considered give employees access tp sensitive information at the classified level; require employees, as a condition of employment, to obtain a security clearance; require employees to engage in activities affecting public health or safety; or give employees access to areas that are frequented by the President or Vice President or areas to which access is controlled by the United States Secret Service in its role of protecting the work environment of the President and the Vice President.
Third, the drug testing program is conducted in a manner that minimizes intrusion into individual privacy. Under mandatory guidelines, EOP employees who are selected for random drug testing 'are permitted to provide urine samples in a rest room stall or similar enclosure. Although a monitor of the same gender may be present, the monitor is not permitted to observe the employee producing the sample unless there is reason to believe the employee will alter or substitute the urine specimen. Absent a court order, or as reqtiired by the United States to defend against a challenge to an adverse personnel action, the test results may be disclosed only to a limited number of EOP officials. Like the drug testing protocols this court and the *810Supreme Court have addressed in previous cases, these procedures “minimize the intrusiveness of the ... drug-screening program.” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 672 n. 2, 109 S.Ct. at 1394 n. 2; see also Harmon, 878 F.2d at 486. While a more invasive search might violate the Fourth Amendment’s reasonableness requirement, the risk of harm in the instant case outweighs the intrusion on appellees’ privacy.
Although the government might have chosen other means of detecting drug activity by its employees, the Supreme Court has made it clear that the reasonableness of a drug testing program “does not necessarily and invariably turn on the existence of alternative ‘less intrusive’ means.” Skinner, 489 U.S. at 629 n. 9, 109 S.Ct. at 1419 n. 9 (quoting Illinois v. Lafayette, 462 U.S. 640, 647, 103 S.Ct. 2605, 2610, 77 L.Ed.2d 65 (1983)); see also National Fed’n of Fed. Employees v. Cheney, 884 F.2d 603, 610 (D.C.Cir.1989), cert. denied., 493 U.S. 1056, 110 S.Ct. 864, 107 L.Ed.2d 948 (1990). The fact that appel-lees work in a traditional office environment where drug use might be detected by individual monitoring, while relevant to the Fourth Amendment analysis, is not dispositive. See NTEU, 27 F.3d at 629; Harmon, 878 F.2d at 489. Although appellees may object that the government has not put forth evidence to suggest that they or their co-workers are susceptible to bribery or blackmail, the Supreme Court has already considered and rejected that argument. See Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 674-75, 109 S.Ct. at 1395; id. at 683-84, 109 S.Ct. at 1400-01 (Scalia, J., dissenting).
Accordingly, consistent with the required balancing test, and with these three factors in mind, the court concludes that the risk of harm to the President and Vice President is sufficient to outweigh the individual OMB passholder’s privacy interests, given the measures taken by the government in the drug testing program to minimize the intrusion into personal privacy that urinalysis entails. As the court notes, it is “extremely unlikely” that the harm the government fears will ever come to pass, especially given the other security measures in place at the OEOB. Majority opinion at 10. Nonetheless, so long as the “possible harm against which the Government seeks to guard is substantial,” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 674-75, 109 S.Ct. at 1395, and has some reasonable possibility of occurring, a drug testing program, as here, that sufficiently minimizes the intrusion into employees’ privacy does not violate the Fourth Amendment. Although the Von Raab premise that drug users are susceptible to bribery is not infinitely elastic, and could not be used to justify drug testing in every case, see' NFFE, 884 F.2d at 614-15; Harmon, 878 F.2d at 490-91, here it is sufficient to tip the balance in the government’s favor.

. National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989); Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989).

. The security measures include a background check by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of every employee who is issued a permanent OEOB pass; the employee and all other persons interviewed are asked about illegal drug use, and the background checks are updated at five-year intervals. Entry into the OEOB is restricted to passholders and pre-approved visitors who are cleared by passholders. Further, an OEOB pass-holder can only "clear” a non-OEOB passholder into the building for a specific appointment, and the Secret Service conducts a background check on that person with the National Crime Information Center. In addition, all persons entering the building must pass through a magnetometer and place any bags or packages in an x-ray machine. Once inside, persons are free to move about the building, except for certain restricted areas, such as the Vice President’s office. However, attendance at any function or event attended by the President or Vice President requires a special invitation. At all times, moreover, the President and the Vice President are protected by Secret Service agents.
Although the President and Vice President, by the nature of their positions, are always at some risk, a 1995 report by the Treasury Department states that:
[a]lthough ... Presidents, have been exposed to deadly or lifethreatening assaults with frightening regularity, not one of these assaults has occurred within the White House Complex. Indeed, each assassination or potentially deadly assassination attempt has occurred when the Presidential protectee was away from the White House, in the proximity of a crowd.
U.S. Dep’t of Treasury, Public Report of the White House Security Review 92 (1995). It is unclear *808from this statement whether less serious assaults have occurred within the White House security perimeter; however, recent events by outside attackers indicate that but for intervention more serious harm could have resulted. See, e.g, United States v. Duran, 96 F.3d 1495 (D.C.Cir.1996).

. The government advises that there were six positive drug tests by EOF employees under the EOF plan between 1989 and 1996. Among OMB employees, drug testing has shown less than a 1% positive testing rate since 1987. As the government notes, however, one of the principal justifications for random drug tests is their deterrent effect, and it is impossible to know with certainty what the incidence of drug use would have been in the absence of such tests.

. There is no reason to address whether the government has "an interest in assuring the public that it is taking every possible precaution to ensure that [the President] is safe.” Majority opinion at 804. The government has not asserted that interest and there is no evidence whether the public is even aware that OMB employees are subject to drug testing.

. As required by the EOP security plan, OMB considered four criteria in identifying which employees would be subject to drug testing:

. In acknowledging that "it is plain that certain forms of public employment may diminish privacy expectations,” Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 671, 109 S.Ct. at 1394, the Supreme Court stated that:
We ... agree that employees who seek promotions to positions where they would handle sensitive information can be required to submit to a urine test ... 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. at 677, 109 S.Ct. at 1397.

.Appellees’ contention that they are willing to return their OEOB passes is unavailing. The court rejected a similar contention in Harmon with respect to holders of top secret clearances, noting that although many such employees rarely see top secret information, "[t]he whole point of granting top secret clearances in advance is to provide flexibility, to ensure that employees can be given access to top secret materials as soon as the need arises.” 878 F.2d at 492. Similarly, the purpose of requiring OMB employees to hold OEOB passes is to provide their employer with flexibility so that they may enter the OEOB at any time on short notice. Furthermore, to the extent that appellees’ duties require them to enter the OEOB, return of the passes would not eliminate the risk the government seeks to avoid.