City employee alleged a Fourth Amendment violation by being ordered to take a drug test on personal animosity. Hudson v. City of Riviera Beach, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 161799 (S.D. Fla. November 13, 2013):<\/p>\n
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The allegations in the Amended Complaint plausibly lend themselves to a conclusion that the drug test was unreasonable from its inception. Although Perry eventually told Hudson that she based her decision to search Hudson on tips from anonymous sources, Hudson asserts that the rationale that Perry provided was untimely, unsubstantiated, and based on, at best, her subjective intuition. While it is true that the Fourth Amendment requires no set level of individualized suspicion, where, as here, Hudson’s job does not justify suspicionless drug-testing, some suspicion is required. Hudson sufficiently alleges that Perry lacked any suspicion whatsoever in ordering his drug test and that she tested him in furtherance of a vendetta only. A governmental search based upon such a purely private and spiteful motivation epitomizes precisely the type of governmental abuse and intrusion against which the Fourth Amendment was intended to protect. If, in fact, Perry ordered the drug-testing simply because she could because of her position and she wished to do so, such a drug search would have been unreasonable. Hudson has sufficiently stated a claim against Perry under the Fourth Amendment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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