Court Opinion

ID: 9741489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:56:33.155855+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:24.389396
License: Public Domain

O’Connor, J.
(dissenting). By today’s decision, the court effectively and unwisely overrules O’Connor v. Police Comm’r of Boston, 408 Mass. 324 (1990). In the process, the court not only displays ambivalence about whether a balancing of interests test is ever an appropriate standard for protecting art. 14 rights, ante at 333-334, contrary to the court’s approach in O’Connor, but also retreats from its assessment in that case of the significance of the public interest in discovering and deterring drug use by police officers.
*340In O’Connor, the issue on appeal was whether suspicionless urinalysis testing of police cadets was unreasonable in the art. 14 sense. The issue in the present case is the same except that the present case relates not to police cadets but to police officers. In O’Connor, four members of the court reasoned that resolution of the question of reasonableness required the court to balance the government’s need for the search and seizure against the procedure’s intrusiveness into the plaintiff’s reasonably expected privacy. In adopting that approach, which requires analysis of “all of the circumstances surrounding the search or seizure and the nature of the search or seizure itself,” Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 619 (1989), quoting United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 537 (1985), the four Justices expressly followed the lead taken by the United States Supreme Court in National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 665 (1989), and by the Supreme Judicial Court in Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Ass’n, Inc. v. State Racing Comm’n, 403 U.S. 692, 704 (1989), Commonwealth v. Shields, 402 Mass. 162, 164 (1988), and Commonwealth v. Trumble, 396 Mass. 81, 88-90 (1985). O’Connor, supra at 327-328. Indeed, the four Justices made the point that, “despite their disclaimer,” the three concurring Justices also “engaged in a balancing of the cadets’ interest against that of the public employer.” Id. at 329. I continue to believe that any determination of whether a search or seizure is constitutionally unreasonable necessarily depends on a balancing of the competing public and private interests in all the relevant circumstances. The court cites no case from any jurisdiction holding otherwise.
The court would distinguish O’Connor from this case on the ground that “in the O’Connor case ... the police cadet had consented to the search, and therefore, he had little or no reasonable expectation of privacy,” while, under Boston Police Department Rule 111, no consent is contemplated. Ante at 331. By that observation, the court implies, if it does not expressly state, that, regardless of the reasonableness of requiring a cadet to consent to urinalysis testing as a condi*341tion of eligibility for the cadet training program, such “consent” results in the cadet’s having little or no interest protect-able by art. 14. Therefore, there is no private interest against which the public interest would have to be balanced. The suggestion is that, in O’Connor, the nonexistence of any significant protectable interest of the plaintiff cadet made unnecessary any genuine consideration of the public interest in the discovery and deterrence of drug use by police cadets. Therefore, the court suggests, O’Connor should not be read as expressing the court’s reasoned conclusion that the public has such an interest. The court then purports to balance the competing public and private interests in this case, in which pre-employment consent was not required, as though the court were operating on a clean slate.
The court is not operating on a clean slate. The court is wrong when it implies that the critical factor in the O’Connor decision was the cadet’s pre-employment consent and not the court’s reasoned conclusion that the public has a very substantial interest in drug-free police cadets. The court is wrong because “public employment may not be ‘conditioned upon the surrender of constitutional rights which could not be abridged by direct government action.’ ” Broderick v. Police Comm’r of Boston, 368 Mass. 33, 37 (1975), cert. denied sub nom. Broderick v. DiGrazia, 423 U.S. 1048 (1976), quoting Keyishian v. Regents of the Univ. of the State of N.Y., 385 U.S. 589, 605 (1967). In recognition of that principle, the court was careful to say in O’Connor, supra at 329, that “[sjurely, the plaintiff would not be barred from relief if his consent to be the subject of a search and seizure were unreasonably required as a condition of employment.” Thus, the cadet’s required pre-employment consent in O’Connor had little impact on that decision. The consent was virtually meaningless unless the consent requirement was “reasonable.” Whether the consent requirement was reasonable in turn depended on balancing the public need for the testing procedure against the cadet’s privacy interest — the same type of art. 14 analysis that would have been required without the consent. The fact is that, although *342the cadet’s consent was “a factor that diminishe[d] the degree of iritrusiveness,” O’Connor, supra at 328, primarily because it put him on notice, the cadet’s “consent,” which was exacted as a condition of employment, was not the critical factor in O’Connor, the public interest was.
In a very real sense, the intrusion wrought by Rule 111 is far less serious than the intrusion considered acceptable by the court in the O’Connor case. In O’Connor, the testing procedure called for the cadets to be visually observed by department officers while urinating, a procedure that is surely highly intrusive. Monitoring is not called for by Rule 111. As United States District Court Judge Keeton noted: “The amendment of Section 9 of Rule 111 was aimed at protecting privacy, and it is undisputed that it rendered moot those arguments previously advanced on grounds of invasion of privacy because of requirements (which appeared in the rule before amendment) that the police officer be observed during urination.” Guiney v. Roache, 654 F. Supp. 1287, 1294 (D. Mass. 1987).
Furthermore, “it is plain that certain forms of public employment may diminish privacy expectations even with respect to such personal searches” as urinalysis tests. National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, supra at 671. As the Supreme Court said in that case with respect to Customs employees, “[w]e think Customs employees who are directly involved in the interdiction of illegal drugs or who are required to carry firearms in the line of duty . . . have a diminished expectation of privacy in respect to the intrusions occasioned by a urine test. Unlike most private citizens or government employees in general, employees involved in drug interdiction reasonably should expect effective inquiry into their fitness and probity. Much the same is true of employees who are required to carry firearms. Because successful performance of their duties depends uniquely on their judgment and dexterity, these employees cannot reasonably expect to keep from the Service personal information that bears directly on their fitness. . . . While reasonable tests designed to elicit this information doubtless infringe some privacy expec*343tations, we do not believe these expectations outweigh the Government’s compelling interests in safety . . . .” (Citation omitted.) Id. at 672. The Court’s observations apply with equal force to police officers.
Finally, the court’s statement in O’Connor, supra at 328-329, concerning the public interest in discovering and deterring drug use by police cadets, was correct when it was made, is correct now, and fits the present case: “Drug use is often difficult to discern. Yet, drug use by police officers has the obvious potential, inimical to public safety and the safety of fellow officers, to impair the perception, judgment, physical fitness, and integrity of the users. Furthermore, the unlawful obtaining, possession, and use of drugs cannot be reconciled with respect for the law. Surely, the public interest requires that those charged with responsibility to enforce the law respect it. Surely, too, public confidence in the police is a social necessity and is enhanced by procedures that deter drug use by police cadets.” Furthermore, there should be no doubt “that drug abuse is one of the most serious problems confronting our society today. There is little reason to believe that American workplaces [including police departments] are immune from this pervasive social problem.” National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab, supra at 674. No further proof of public necessity ought to be required.
If, as the court held in O’Connor, the public interest in discovering and deterring drug use by police cadets made the requirement of a cadet’s consent to urinalysis testing reasonable, and made the subsequent urinalysis testing reasonable as well, even though intrusive monitoring was involved in that procedure, a requirement that permanent police officers submit to unmonitored urinalysis testing is also reasonable. It is strange indeed that, in the O’Connor case, the court recognized the public interest in discovering and deterring drug use by cadets, but now it fails to recognize the same public interest or a greater one in discovering and deterring drug use by permanent police officers whose conduct has impact on public safety, police safety, law enforcement, and public *344confidence much more than does the conduct of cadets. I would affirm the judgment below.