In Irvine, Lawyer Who Wrote Test Guidelines Feels Vindicated

When Hugh Hewitt says drug testing isn’t intrusive, isn’t a big deal, doesn’t interfere with your personal privacy, you kind of have to believe him.

Okay, so Hewitt was general counsel in charge of drafting the federal government’s main drug testing guidelines in 1986. That accounts for a bit of bias.

But a month before he left public service for private law practice in Irvine and the directorship of the Nixon Foundation and Library, well, his number came up. So he headed for the lab and grabbed a beaker.

“I can tell you from personal experience, it ain’t intrusive,” says Hewitt, whose urine was randomly tested in January when he was serving his last weeks as deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management. “I’ve been through it myself. It applies across the board. It’s a good program.”

Upheld by Supreme Court

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld the government’s right to test Customs Service employees seeking drug-enforcement jobs and struck down the National Treasury Employees Union challenge to the screening program.

The Customs Service screening program--the basis of Supreme Court decision--was announced in May, 1986, and predates the guidelines fostered by Hewitt by a few months.

But Hewitt sees the 5-4 decision validating testing as a vindication of his guidelines, which came into being when former President Reagan ordered the Office of Personnel Management to develop a strategy so every agency could test its workers for drugs where appropriate.

“If NTEU had won today, drug testing in the federal government would have been dead for all intents and purposes,” Hewitt says.

Instead, he says, the Supreme Court “has set down an analysis that every agency can employ to determine which of its employees may be subject to random drug testing.”

Hewitt headed a three-agency panel that wrote the government’s screening guide in October and November, 1986.

Now that the first challenge has been met, “hundreds of thousands of people” in the bureaucratic ranks will be open to testing, Hewitt said.

Another upcoming drug-screening test case concerns the Department of Defense, which he said now wants to test workers who assemble hand grenades.

Classified Information

In Hewitt’s interpretation, “that’s probably OK under this decision. The Supreme Court has approved (testing for) railroad workers, narcotics agents, people who carry firearms, and they have indicated that people who deal with classified information are probably able to be tested.”