9th Circuit Court limits employment drug testing
This one comes from my neck of the woods here in Oregon, where the Woodburn City Library required mandatory drug screens of candidates for part-time library jobs. Because, you know, nothing is more dangerous than a high librarian!
SAN FRANCISCO — A city can’t require all job applicants to be tested for narcotics and must instead show why drug use in a particular job would be dangerous, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The city was sued by Janet Lanier, whose job offer as a part-time page at the city library was withdrawn in 2004 when she refused a drug and alcohol test. A federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional and awarded Lanier $12,400 in damages and $44,000 in legal fees, her lawyer said.
Federal courts have upheld mandatory drug screening for jobs in which performance “may pose a great danger to the public,” the appeals judges said. They cited Supreme Court rulings allowing drug testing of railroad crews after accidents and of customs agents who search others for illegal drugs.
But the Ninth Circuit court said Woodburn’s rationale for universal screening - that drug use is a serious social problem affecting the performance of any job - was rejected by the Supreme Court in 1997 when it struck down Georgia’s requirement that all candidates for public office undergo narcotics testing to show their commitment to the war on drugs.
The Supreme Court said the state was requiring testing for purely symbolic reasons, which was not enough to avoid the constitutional requirement that a search warrant be based on evidence of wrongdoing.
The same reasoning applies to a city’s drug testing of applicants for everyday jobs with no connection to safety or security, Judge Pamela Rymer said in the 3-0 ruling.
Will this ruling have a ripple effect to other industries? Personally, I was offered a $60,000/year job as a field technician, debugging software for a major medical device manufacturer, and then the offer was withdrawn because the hair in my armpits tested positive for marijuana metabolites.
Yes… my armpit hair. This job didn’t pee-test, it hair-tested, and at the time I was shaving my head bald in a vain attempt (in both meanings of the word) to deal with my male-pattern baldness. Since there was no hair on my head, the technician (not a nurse, not a doctor, and in a room with no privacy) had me remove my shirt so she could shave off some armpit hair for the test.
Needless to say, I failed, since I work with medical marijuana patients all the time and, well, somebody needs to make sure that medicine isn’t laced with some pesticide or PCP.
Now I don’t think this ruling would help in my situation, since a) the company was under federal contracts and b) there is a safety argument to be made when you’re coding the software that runs a heart monitor. However, maybe retail store clerks, baristas, dishwashers, office workers, and janitors, among others, will get some relief from these stupid and discriminatory workplace drug screens.
Tags: 9th Circuit Court
