322
Opinion of the Court
safety-sensitive tasks, and the required certification immediately aids no interdiction effort. The need revealed, in short, is symbolic, not "special," as that term draws meaning from our case law.
In Von Raab, the Customs Service had defended its officer drug-testing program in part as a way to demonstrate the agency's commitment to enforcement of the law. See Brief for United States in Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, O. T. 1988, No. 86-1879, pp. 35-36. The Von Raab Court, however, did not rely on that justification. Indeed, if a need of the "set a good example" genre were sufficient to overwhelm a Fourth Amendment objection, then the care this Court took to explain why the needs in Skinner, Von Raab, and Vernonia ranked as "special" wasted many words in entirely unnecessary, perhaps even misleading, elaborations.
In a pathmarking dissenting opinion, Justice Brandeis recognized the importance of teaching by example: "Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example." Olm-stead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 485 (1928). Justice Brandeis explained in Olmstead why the Government set a bad example when it introduced in a criminal proceeding evidence obtained through an unlawful Government wiretap:
"[I]t is . . . immaterial that the intrusion was in aid of law enforcement. Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." Id., at 479.
However well meant, the candidate drug test Georgia has devised diminishes personal privacy for a symbol's sake. The Fourth Amendment shields society against that state action.
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