The Nation : Agriculture Dept. Drug Testing Barred

A federal court barred the Agriculture Department from randomly testing 755 employees for illegal drug use without a “reasonable, articulable” suspicion of an individual’s on-the-job impairment. The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Thomas Flannery in Washington came in response to lawsuits by two employees unions representing 750 animal disease and plant inspectors and five computer operators and drivers at USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. Flannery ruled that the government could not justify the intrusive search of the employees, noting that “the number of drug-related incidents in the past five years . . . is infinitesimal when compared to the number of employees at USDA.” The government’s interest in assuring a drug-free workplace “fails to offset the increased intrusion into the legitimate expectations of privacy of the employees subject to the proposed testing,” Flannery said.