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Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305, 10 (1997)

Legal Research Home > United States Supreme Court > 520 U.S. > Chandler v. Miller, 520 U.S. 305, 10 (1997)

314

CHANDLER v. MILLER

Opinion of the Court

quotation marks omitted). When such "special needs"— concerns other than crime detection—are alleged in justification of a Fourth Amendment intrusion, courts must undertake a context-specific inquiry, examining closely the competing private and public interests advanced by the parties. See Von Raab, 489 U. S., at 665-666; see also id., at 668. As Skinner stated: "In limited circumstances, where the privacy interests implicated by the search are minimal, and where an important governmental interest furthered by the intrusion would be placed in jeopardy by a requirement of individualized suspicion, a search may be reasonable despite the absence of such suspicion." 489 U. S., at 624.

In evaluating Georgia's ballot-access, drug-testing statute—a measure plainly not tied to individualized suspicion— the Eleventh Circuit sought to " 'balance the individual's privacy expectations against the [State's] interests,' " 73 F. 3d, at 1545 (quoting Von Raab, 489 U. S., at 665), in line with our precedents most immediately in point: Skinner, Von Raab, and Vernonia. We review those decisions before inspecting Georgia's law.

A

Skinner concerned Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) regulations that required blood and urine tests of rail employees involved in train accidents; the regulations also authorized railroads to administer breath and urine tests to employees who violated certain safety rules. 489 U. S., at 608-612. The FRA adopted the drug-testing program in response to evidence of drug and alcohol abuse by some railroad employees, the obvious safety hazards posed by such abuse, and the documented link between drug- and alcohol-impaired employees and the incidence of train accidents. Id., at 607-608. Recognizing that the urinalysis tests, most conspicuously, raised evident privacy concerns, the Court noted two offsetting considerations: First, the regulations reduced the intrusiveness of the collection process, id., at 626;

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