Court Opinion

ID: 9489566
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 13:19:04.125035+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:53:36.237116
License: Public Domain

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
I certainly agree that the State did not violate Yin’s Fourth Amendment rights by requiring her to undergo an independent medical examination. I would raise a flag of caution, however, about the court’s expansive statement that all medical examinations im*874plicate the Fourth Amendment, whether or not the examination entails any particularly intrusive procedures.
The Fourth Amendment provides that “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated-” U.S. Const. amend IV. Before we apply the reasonableness standard, the event at issue must constitute a “search” or a “seizure.” The Supreme Court unquestionably has deemed certain “medical” procedures searches. A “compelled intrusio[n] into the body for blood” is a search. Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 767-68, 86 S.Ct. 1826, 1833-35, 16 L.Ed.2d 908 (1966). A breathalyzer test, “which generally requires the production of alveolar or ‘deep lung’ breath for chemical analysis,” is a search. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602, 616-17, 109 S.Ct. 1402, 1412-13, 103 L.Ed.2d 639 (1989) (citation omitted). The collection and testing of urine, which “intrudes upon expectations of privacy that society has long recognized as reasonable,” is also a search. Id. at 617, 109 S.Ct. at 1413; see Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, — U.S. -, -, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 2390, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995).
It would be utterly unsound to make the bold extrapolation from these cases that all medical examinations are searches. First, it is unclear exactly what qualifies as a “medical examination.” Second, the reason certain medical procedures constitute searches is that they “intrud[e] upon expectations of privacy” that society recognizes as reasonable. Skinner, 489 U.S. at 617, 109 S.Ct. at 1413. Under the court’s newly fashioned rule, however, if any encounter can be labeled a medical examination, it per se is a search, “whether or not that examination entails any particularly intrusive procedures.” The per se rule puts the cart before the horse. We should be cautious to outpace medical technology in this sensitive area of the law.
Since I do agree, however, that certain aspects of the routine physical examination at issue here would implicate the requisite “concerns about bodily integrity,” id. at 617, 109 S.Ct. at 1413, I concur in the court’s application of the balancing test for reasonableness, and in the result in this case. I cannot, however, concur in its dictum.