Court Limits Scope of Injunction Against Drug Tests at Justice Dept.

A federal appeals court Friday said a temporary injunction blocking a Justice Department random drug-testing program should not extend to presidential appointees in the Justice Department or to employees there whose job is to handle drugs.

A two-paragraph order from the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted that none of the department lawyers challenging the drug-testing program are presidential appointees or people who maintain, store or safeguard drugs as part of their work.

Therefore, the order said, the lawyers challenging the program “lack standing” to include those two categories of Justice Department personnel.

The order affects only a small number of the 4,700 department employees who would be included in a mandatory random drug-testing program, fewer than 20 presidential appointees and a larger number in the other category.

The drug-testing program had not been put into effect when it was challenged last summer.

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Amy Brown, said that “the practical impact of the order seems to be” that testing could proceed for those two categories of employees if the department decided to issue 30-day notices informing those groups that they could face testing after a month.

The appeals court remanded the case to U.S. District Court to excise those two categories from the preliminary injunction and return the case to the appeals court for further consideration.

U.S. District Judge George Revercomb found that testing without any suspicion of drug use by the individual is an unconstitutional invasion of privacy.