explaining that when "a Fourth Amendment intrusion serves special governmen- tal needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, it is necessary to balance the individual's privacy expectations against the Govern- ment's interests to determine whether it is impractical to require a warrant or some level of individualized suspicion in the particular context"
How later courts described this case
- explaining that when "a Fourth Amendment intrusion serves special governmen- tal needs, beyond the normal need for law enforcement, it is necessary to balance the individual's privacy expectations against the Govern- ment's interests to determine whether it is impractical to require a warrant or some level of individualized suspicion in the particular context"
- holding reasonable a U.S. Customs regulation requiring urine testing of all employees who applied for a promotion that required the carrying of a gun and involvement with drug interdiction, given that the “government’s compelling interest in safeguarding borders and public safety outweighed diminished privacy expectation”
- recognizing that not only is the physical safety of border employees themselves-those involved in drug interdiction and those who otherwise are required to carry firearms-threatened in that line of work but also the safety of others at large should those employees carry out their duties in an impaired state
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by United States v. Lonna Deane Ross, 32 F.3d 1411 (1994)
489 U.S. 656, 109 S.Ct. 1384, 103 L.Ed.2d 685 (1989), is inapplicable to the search at issue in this case.
The opinion
Justice Marshall,
with whom Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
For the reasons stated in my dissenting opinion in Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives’ Assn., ante, p. 635, I also dissent from the Court’s decision in this case. Here, as in Skinner, the Court’s abandonment of the Fourth Amendment’s express requirement that searches of the person rest on *680 probable cause is unprincipled and unjustifiable. But even if I believed that balancing analysis was appropriate under the Fourth Amendment, I would still dissent from today’s judgment for the reasons stated by Justice Scalia in his dissenting opinion, post this page, and for the reasons noted by the dissenting judge below relating to the inadequate tailoring of the Customs Service’s drug-testing plan. See 816 F. 2d 170 , 182-184 (CA5 1987) (Hill, J.).