Employee Urine Testing and the Fourth Amendment.

The article examines the implications of the Fourth Amendment for employee urine testing in the U.S. One of the most critical employment law issues to emerge in the 1980s concerns workplace-related drug use. Because of the enormous human and economic costs involved, employers in all fields have begun earnest campaigns to find evidence of substance abuse in their work forces and are increasingly refusing to hire or are firing people targeted as drug users. A popular weapon in their drug-detection arsenal is urinalysis, a process in which urine specimens taken from workers and job applicants are subjected to one or more of several available tests designed to detect controlled substances. Advocates of urine testing stress that employers have the right, if not the duty, to try to rid their employment ranks of illicit drug users, and they emphasize the effectiveness of this screening technique in helping employers to do so. Opponents concede the need for a drug-free work setting but argue that urine testing is an unreliable and unduly intrusive means of obtaining one.