CA11: Drug testing as a condition of receiving public assistance in Florida violates the Fourth Amendment

Drug testing as a condition of receiving public assistance in Florida violates the Fourth Amendment. The state’s proffer on “special needs” exception as justification woefully fails. Lebron v. Secretary, Florida Department of Children and Families, 710 F.3d 1202 (11th Cir. 2013):

The Secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families (“State”) appeals from the district court’s order enjoining the State of Florida from requiring Luis W. Lebron to submit to a suspicionless drug test pursuant to Section 414.0652 of the Florida Statutes, as a condition for receipt of government provided monetary assistance for which he was otherwise qualified.

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In addition to the mandatory drug test, applicants are required to sign a release acknowledging their consent to be tested. Id. § 414.0652(2)(e). At the time Lebron applied for TANF benefits, he was notified of Florida’s mandatory drug testing requirement and that he was required to sign the release before DCF would allow him to proceed with the application process. Lebron signed the release, completed the application process and was found eligible for TANF benefits. However, he did not submit to the drug test, but instead filed this lawsuit seeking to enjoin the enforcement of Florida’s mandatory suspicionless drug testing as a violation of his and all other TANF applicants’ Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The district court granted a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of the drug testing statute against Lebron and the State agreed to discontinue its drug testing regime as to all TANF applicants until this litigation is fully resolved.

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. . . We conclude that, on this record, the answer to that question of whether there is a substantial special need for mandatory suspicionless drug testing is “no.”

As the district court found, the State failed to offer any factual support or to present any empirical evidence of a “concrete danger” of illegal drug use within Florida’s TANF population. See id. at 319. The evidence in this record does not suggest that the population of TANF recipients engages in illegal drug use or that they misappropriate government funds for drugs at the expense of their own and their children’s basic subsistence. The State has presented no evidence that simply because an applicant for TANF benefits is having financial problems, he is also drug addicted or prone to fraudulent and neglectful behavior.

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There is nothing so special or immediate about the government’s interest in ensuring that TANF recipients are drug free so as to warrant suspension of the Fourth Amendment. The only known and shared characteristic of the individuals who would be subjected to Florida’s mandatory drug testing program is that they are financially needy families with children. Yet, there is nothing inherent to the condition of being impoverished that supports the conclusion that there is a “concrete danger” that impoverished individuals are prone to drug use or that should drug use occur, that the lives of TANF recipients are “fraught with such risks of injury to others that even a momentary lapse of attention can have disastrous consequences.” Skinner, 489 U.S. at 628; see also Von Raab, 489 U.S. at 670. Thus, the State’s argument that it has a special need to ensure that the goals of the TANF program are not jeopardized by the effects of drug use seems to rest on the presumption of unlawful drug use. But the Supreme Court has required that a state must present adequate factual support that there exists a “concrete danger,” Chandler, 520 U.S. at 319, not simply conjecture that there is a substantial “special need” that cannot be met by ordinary law enforcement methods warranting the drastic action of abrogating an individual’s constitutional right to be free from unreasonable government searches.