Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Assoc.

Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Assoc., United States Supreme Court (489 U.S. 602), Decided March 21, 1989

Decision: Drug and alcohol tests required by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) are constitutional in that they do not violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Background: On the basis of evidence indicating that alcohol and drug abuse by railroad employees had caused or contributed to a number of significant train accidents, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) promulgated regulations under DOT statutory authority to adopt safety standards for the industry. Among other things, the regulations required railroads to see that blood and urine tests of covered employees were conducted following certain major train accidents or incidents, and authorized, but did not require, railroads to administer breath or urine tests, or both, to covered employees who violated certain safety rules. The Railway Labor Executives' Association and various of its member labor organizations brought suit to enjoin the regulations.

Court’s Opinion: The Supreme Court first determined that the Fourth Amendment is applicable to the FRA’s drug and alcohol testing program because there is sufficient “state action” to trigger the protections of the Fourth Amendment.

The Court then determined that both drug and alcohol testing constitute a “search” or “seizure” of an individual.

The next step in the Court’s analysis was to determine whether the required searches were reasonable, since the Fourth Amendment only prohibits searches that are “unreasonable.” A search under the Fourth Amendment is generally not reasonable unless it is conducted pursuant to a judicial warrant or upon “probable cause.” Because the drug tests called for by the FRA regulations were not restricted to “probable cause” circumstances, the Court had to determine whether they could still be constitutional under some lesser standard.

The Court thus examined the government’s interest in regulating the conduct of railroad employees and concluded that its “special needs” — the need to prevent accidents and casualties in railroad operations attributable to alcohol or drug-impaired employees — warranted a departure from the Fourth Amendment’s traditional warrant and probable cause requirements, even in cases where reasonable suspicion did not exist.

The Court established a balancing test whereby a search will be deemed reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when the government’s interests in conducting the search outweighed an individual’s expectation of privacy.

Having established this test, the Court examined the privacy expectations of the rail employees subject to testing and concluded that their participation in an industry subject to such pervasive safety-related regulation diminished their individual expectations of privacy.

In sum, the Court found that the FRA-required drug and alcohol tests are reasonable under the Fourth Amendment even though there is no requirement of a warrant or a reasonable suspicion that any particular employee may be impaired, because the compelling governmental interests served by the regulations outweigh employees' privacy concerns.