Chandler v. Miller: the Supreme Court Closed the Door on the Factual Instances That Warrant Suspicionless Searches - Justin Scott

• Publication year: 1998

Chandler v. Miller: The Supreme Court Closed the Door on the Factual Instances That Warrant Suspicionless Searches

Chandler v. Miller¹ involved the constitutionality of a Georgia statute that required candidates for designated state offices to pass a drug test prior to qualifying for nomination or election.²

I. Factual Background

In 1990 the Georgia General Assembly enacted a law requiring candidates for designated state offices to certify that they had tested negative for illegal drugs thirty days prior to qualifying for nomination or election.³ To ensure the testing scheme's professional validity, the statute required the procedure to comport with the Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs.⁴ Candidates who sought qualification for nomination or election to a designated state office were informed that the procedure could be conducted at any state-approved medical testing laboratory or in the privacy of the candidate's personal physician's office.⁵ Once a sample was obtained, it was sent to an approved laboratory to determine whether any of the specified illegal drugs were present. A certificate reporting the results of the test was then sent to the candidate. The certificate did not include a detailed analysis of the candidate's sample but merely provided that a drug screen had been performed and that the results were negative.

In May 1994 petitioners Chandler, Harris, and Walker, Libertarian Party nominees, filed this action seeking declaratory and injunctive relief in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia. Petitioners filed suit against Governor Zell Miller and two other state officials involved in administering the statute.⁶ The district court, relying on the important nature of the offices sought coupled with the relative unintrusiveness of the testing procedure, denied petitioners' motion for preliminary injunctive relief.⁷ In January 1995 the district court entered judgment for respondents.⁸

On appeal a divided Eleventh Circuit panel affirmed the decision.⁹ The court concluded that the state's important interest in maintaining the integrity of its high public offices outweighed the individual privacy expectations intruded upon by the mandatory drug testing requirement.¹⁰ Consequently, the court held the statute, as applied in this instance, to be consistent with the requirements of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.¹¹

The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed.¹² The Court concluded that Georgia's drug testing scheme for candidates seeking to qualify for nomination or election did not fall within the narrow scope of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches.¹³

II. Legal Background

It is undisputed that government-ordered collection and testing of bodily fluids constitutes a search governed by the strictures of the Fourth Amendment.¹⁴ The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause . . . ."¹⁵ Traditionally, the Supreme Court has deemed a warrantless search reasonable only when accompanied by some degree of individualized suspicion.¹⁶ However, the Court has recently recognized certain situations when a search was considered reasonable in the absence of any level of individualized suspicion.¹⁷

In New Jersey v. T.L.O.,¹⁸ the Court defined the limited circumstances to which this exception applies: "Only in those exceptional circumstances in which special needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, make the warrant and probable-cause requirement impracticable, is a court entitled to substitute its balancing of interests for that of the Framers."¹⁹ In these limited circumstances, the Court used a two-tiered analysis to determine the reasonableness of the search. At the first tier, the Court focused upon whether or not a "special need" existed. Once a "special need" was established, the Court attempted at the second tier to balance the government's interests against the individual's privacy expectations to determine whether it was practical to require a warrant or some level of individualized suspicion in the particular context.²⁰

The "special needs" balancing test was first applied in the context of a mandatory drug testing scheme in Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Ass'n.²¹ In Skinner the Court upheld Federal Railroad Administration ("FRA") regulations that required mandatory drug testing of employees who were involved in certain train accidents or had violated certain safety rules.²² The regulations were enacted in response to evidence of drug abuse by railway employees and the obvious safety hazards posed by this abuse.²³

The Court found that the government's interest in testing without a showing of individualized suspicion in this context was indeed compelling and sufficient to constitute a "special need."²⁴ Railroad employees subject to the testing regulations were responsible for duties "fraught with such risks of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention [could] have disastrous consequences."²⁵ Because these employees could cause significant human loss before any signs of impairment became apparent to others, the requirement of individual- ized suspicion would frustrate the purpose for which the governmental scheme was enacted.²⁶

The Court's analysis then shifted to the individual privacy expectations intruded upon by the testing scheme. While the Court noted that government-ordered collection of blood and urine samples necessarily infringed upon the privacy expectations of the employee, the Court concluded that these expectations were diminished by the employees' participation in an industry that was highly regulated to ensure safety.²⁷ Therefore, the Court held that the testing procedures contemplated by the regulations posed a justifiable threat to the expectations of privacy of the covered employees.²⁸ Having recognized the existence of a "special need," the Court held that the government's compelling interests served by the FRA's regulations outweighed the individual privacy concerns of the railroad employees.²⁹

In National Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab,³⁰ decided the same day as Skinner, the Supreme Court had another opportunity to apply its newly forged "special needs" balancing test. In Von Raab the Court sustained a United States Customs Service program that conditioned promotions or transfers to certain positions upon the successful completion of a drug test.³¹ The positions covered by the testing scheme were those that: (1) directly involved drug interdiction, (2) required the incumbent to carry a firearm, and (3) required the incumbent to handle...