Judge Orders Injunction On Florida’s Welfare Drug Testing Law

[demmiblue]

Source: TPM


A U.S. district judge on Monday ordered an injunction on a Florida law requiring welfare applicants to pass a drug test before receiving state benefits.

An ACLU lawsuit filed in September claimed the Florida law violates the Fourth Amendment by requiring welfare applicants to submit to a “suspicionless” drug test. The suit was filed on behalf of Luis Lebron, a 35-year-old Orlando resident and Navy veteran who applied for welfare benefits but refused to take the drug test.

“I’m delighted for our client and delighted to have confirmation that all of us remain protected from unreasonable, suspicionless government searches and seizures,” Florida ACLU Legal Director Maira Kayanan said in a release.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) has insisted the law increases “personal responsibility” and keeps public funds from financing drug habits. Scott has even said that drug use is “much higher” among welfare recipients than in the population at large. Early results from the drug tests suggest otherwise. And the court isn’t buying Scott’s claim.


Read more: http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/10/judge_orders_injunction_on_floridas_welfare_drug_t.php

[musiclawyer]

1. What took so long

I jest. I know how gummed up the federal courts are Good news

[Liberal Veteran]

2. Finally. This is a disgusting abomination.

Hopefully, this idiocy will be ruled illegal.

[midnight]

3. K&R Thanks ACLU for protecting the poor from “suspicionless” drug test.

[villager]

4. But getting a drug test to be employed is "suspicionless" as well, if it's a blanket requirement...

:shrug:

[Kali]

5. and that is just as fucking wrong too!

[jberryhill]

7. And is that conducted by the government?

[villager]

8. Not for private employment -- though it's still suspicionless -- and we haven't touched on schools

...yet

Wonder what this means for teacher drug tests?

[jberryhill]

10. Not much

Apples and oranges.

These tests are a condition that has been placed upon mandated benefits to which the applicants are otherwise entitled.

Nobody is entitled to employment as a teacher.

That's one of several distinctions in these sorts of cases.

[villager]

12. It is still "suspicionless," in that it's not occasioned by individual behavior

..and is simply an intrusive condition -- evidently defended by folks like you -- placed on employment, where stacked laws and courts tend to favor corporations, instead of workers.

[jberryhill]

13. Ah "folks like me"

Lovely.

You can hang your hat on "suspicionless" all you like.

However, searches not conducted by the government are not fourth amendment searches. Okay? that was your first one.

Second, there is a large body of law addressing drug testing in employment screening for government employers. Honestly, if you want to know about them, you can go read them. Suffice it to say that because the government is not going out and requiring anyone to apply for a job with them, then it comes down to a mess of factors that determine when and whether it is okay. Bottom line - if you are being hired to operate a locomotive for the municipal mass transit system, a court is likely going to say "test his pee all you like". If you are being hired to be the town greeter, and smile and wave at passing cars on Main Street, maybe not so much.

The point is, and my only point is, that this holding in relation to benefits has nothing, nada, zip, to do with screening in the employment situation. I'm not "defending" a damned thing, but simply trying to point out why these two things:

(1) mandatory testing as a condition for receiving a mandated benefit; and

(2) mandatory testing as a condition of employment

do not implicate the same legal considerations.

That's all.

It's unfortunate that "people like you" are often unable to hold a civil conversation, though, and feel a need to ascribe motives to others out of some undirected hostility in desperate need of an appropriate target.

[villager]

15. well, you're the one being snippy and snarky -- perhaps that's your definition of "civil?"

In any case, "mandatory testing" is growing, perniciously, in both public and private sectors, and if this ruling provides any basis for its rethinking in the private sector -- where, believe it or not, employees can still have legal protections -- so much the better.

That's all I was saying.

Sorry your desperate need of an appropriate target ginned up an "argument" that wasn't really there.

[truthisfreedom]

11. I'm an employer who doesn't care so I don't test. But, if I ran a charter

air service I would drug test everyone. There are some jobs that require drug testing. I wouldn't want to shop in a warehouse-style store that didn't drug test employees. I don't want something dropping on my head because a stoner stayed up all night getting baked and didn't pay full attention while lifting a pallet full of air compressors onto a high shelf.

My company manufactures guitar accessories. Most of my employees are artists and musicians. Drug tests are not going to fly.

[jberryhill]

14. ...and that gets to the heart of the distinction

First off - private employers have nothing to do with the Fourth Amendment.

Secondly, if the government is the employer, then considerations about whether the person is being hired to fly an aircraft or operate a train are relevant considerations. The point being that nobody is forced to apply for a government job in the first place, and no law makes one entitled to a government job.


The effectiveness of looking at someone's pee, instead of their present state of appropriate consciousness to do the job in question, of course, is not even in the ballpark of things a court is going to look at.

[1monster]

6. Oh, dear. Poor Governor Rick Voldemort is going to lose all of that potential

income if the poor requesting help are not forced to pay for those drug tests at the gov's wife's clinics. :nopity:

[krabigirl]

9. Good. Nt