{"id":14511,"date":"2014-12-03T15:48:40","date_gmt":"2014-12-03T20:48:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=14511"},"modified":"2016-03-25T07:09:50","modified_gmt":"2016-03-25T12:09:50","slug":"ca11-welfare-recipients-cant-be-drug-tested-without-reasonable-suspicion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=14511","title":{"rendered":"CA11: Welfare recipients can’t be drug tested without reasonable suspicion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welfare recipients can’t be drug tested without reasonable suspicion as a condition of receiving benefits under the Fourth Amendment. [This is Lebron II.] Lebron v. Sec\u2019y of the Fla. Dept. of Children & Families<\/a>, 772 F.3d 1352 (11th Cir. 2014):<\/p>\n

A Florida statute mandates suspicionless drug testing of all applicants seeking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (\u201cTANF\u201d) benefits. See Fla. Stat. \u00a7 414.0652. Luis Lebron sued the Secretary of the Florida Department of Children and Families (the \u201cState\u201d), claiming that the statute violates the Fourth Amendment\u2019s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, applied against the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. After we affirmed the entry of a preliminary injunction barring the application of the statute against Lebron, the State halted the drug-testing program. See Lebron v. Sec\u2019y, Fla. Dep\u2019t of Children & Families (Lebron I)<\/a>, 710 F.3d 1202 (11th Cir. 2013). Since then, the district court granted final summary judgment to Lebron, declared \u00a7 414.0652 unconstitutional, and permanently enjoined its enforcement.<\/p>\n

We affirm.
\nOn this record, the State has failed to meet its burden of establishing a substantial special need to drug test all TANF applicants without any suspicion. Even viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party, the State has not demonstrated a more prevalent, unique, or different drug problem among TANF applicants than in the general population. The ordinary government interests claimed in this case are nothing like the narrow category of special needs that justify blanket drug testing of railroad workers, certain federal Customs employees involved in drug interdiction or who carry firearms, or students who participate in extracurricular activities because those programs involve \u201csurpassing safety interests,\u201d Skinner v. Railway Labor Execs. Ass\u2019n, 489 U.S. 602, 634 (1989), or \u201cclose supervision of school children,\u201d Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 655 (1995) (quoting New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 339 (1985)).<\/p>\n

Moreover, as we held in Lebron I, the State cannot circumvent constitutional concerns by requiring that applicants consent to a drug test to receive TANF payments. When a government benefit is conditioned on suspicionless drug testing, the voluntariness of the program is properly viewed as a factor baked into the special needs reasonableness analysis, not as an exception to it. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welfare recipients can’t be drug tested without reasonable suspicion as a condition of receiving benefits under the Fourth Amendment. [This is Lebron II.] Lebron v. Sec\u2019y of the Fla. Dept. of Children & Families, 772 F.3d 1352 (11th Cir. 2014): … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14511"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21396,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14511\/revisions\/21396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}