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from the unreasonable-searches-and-seizures dept.
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.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday December 04 2014, @10:05PM
You can easily imagine someone getting food stamps to cover the food so she can still spend her meager income on drugs - and indeed most of us have probably met someone like that, at one point or another. In that case, one could argue that the food stamps are causing her (and the child!) harm, not benefit.
But obviously either that is a much smaller percentage of the population than the legislators must have imagined, or perhaps these expensive tests are not all that effective. And the Constitutional infirmity of the measure should have really been obvious anyway.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday December 05 2014, @01:36AM
Actually, by the time an addict reaches that point, the food stamps aren't the reason the drug use continues. Without them, addict and child would starve while the drugs continued.