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Florida Law Mandating Drug Testing for Assistance Applicants Ruled Unconstitutional

posted by janrinok on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the unreasonable-searches-and-seizures dept.

"gewg_" writes:

Via Common Dreams, the American Civil Liberties Union reports

[December 3], a three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that a 2011 Florida law mandating that all applicants for the state's Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program submit to suspicion-less drug tests violates the Constitution's protection against unreasonable government searches.

[...]The 11th Circuit panel's order rejects arguments made by attorneys for the State of Florida that government has the authority to require people to submit to invasive searches of their bodily fluids without suspicion of wrongdoing, stating "the warrantless, suspicionless urinalysis drug testing of every Florida TANF applicant as a mandatory requirement for receiving Temporary Cash Assistance offends the Fourth Amendment."

[...]A 2012 review of the TANF mandatory urinalysis program found that the state of Florida spent more money reimbursing individuals for drug tests than the state saved on screening out the extremely small percentage.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:59PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 04 2014, @05:59PM (#122634)

    No one is honest all the time. The politicians pushing this stuff are representing the will of some of their constituents. Sure those constituents hold some really cruel attitudes but that's life. We are all a mix of good and bad and much of what distinguishes between good and bad is just a question of perspective.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by arashi no garou on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:40PM

    by arashi no garou (2796) on Thursday December 04 2014, @06:40PM (#122652)

    I used to feel the same way. I once had hope that there were good people involved in politics and would ignore bad behavior from what I thought of as "good" people. Then I worked for the government for 14 years and I realized the truth: There is no such thing as a "good" person in politics. No matter what good intentions someone has when running for an elected position, they will inevitably feel the slimy hands of greed and power around them and will succumb to that embrace.