{"id":5883,"date":"2011-08-09T20:12:31","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T20:12:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T20:12:31","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=5883","title":{"rendered":"Harv.C.R.-C.L. L.Rev.: “In Their Own Words\u2013-FL Governor Rick Scott & Economic Profiling”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review editorial piece: In Their Own Words\u2013-FL Governor Rick Scott & Economic Profiling<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Last month, Governor Rick Scott of Florida signed a bill requiring Temporary Assistance for Needy Families recipients to undergo drug testing. If a recipient tests positive for drugs, she or he becomes ineligible for benefits. Scott reasoned that this law prevents taxpayer money from subsidizing drug addiction.<\/p>\n

The passage of this legislation sparked a debate in the legal community regarding whether Governor Scott\u2019s drug testing requirement violates the Fourth Amendment rights of welfare recipients. This Constitutional discussion is certainly important \u2013 indeed, critics\u2019 Fourth Amendment arguments against the legislation may ultimately lead to its invalidation \u2013 however from a civil rights perspective, the discriminatory nature of the legislation is even more important.<\/p>\n

Scott\u2019s legislation sanctions a form of mass profiling \u2013 \u201ceconomic profiling.\u201d It forces lower-income individuals to undergo intrusive tests in order to receive government benefits, but does not render benefits received by other groups contingent on undergoing such tests. Supporters of the bill assert that there is nothing discriminatory about it; they claim that it simply addresses the reality that a disproportionate amount of welfare recipients are drug users. Even if this claim were true (and it is questionable), it cannot justify government action that targets a broad population based on purported characteristics of some of its members. Such action constitutes a paradigmatic example of discrimination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5883\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}