OCTOBER TERM, 1996
Syllabus
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the eleventh circuit
No. 96-126. Argued January 14, 1997—Decided April 15, 1997
A Georgia statute requires candidates for designated state offices to certify that they have taken a urinalysis drug test within 30 days prior to qualifying for nomination or election and that the test result was negative. Petitioners, Libertarian Party nominees for state offices subject to the statute's requirements, filed this action in the District Court about one month before the deadline for submission of the certificates. Naming as defendants the Governor and two officials involved in the statute's administration, petitioners asserted, inter alia, that the drug tests violated their rights under the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The District Court denied petitioners' motion for a preliminary injunction and later entered final judgment for respondents. Relying on this Court's precedents sustaining drug-testing programs for student athletes, Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U. S. 646, 650, 665-666, Customs Service employees, Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U. S. 656, 659, and railway employees, Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 U. S. 602, 608-613, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed. The court accepted as settled law that the tests were searches, but reasoned that, as was true of the drug-testing programs at issue in Skinner and Von Raab, the statute served "special needs," interests other than the ordinary needs of law enforcement. Balancing the individual's privacy expectations against the State's interest in the drug-testing program, the court held the statute, as applied to petitioners, not inconsistent with the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
Held: Georgia's requirement that candidates for state office pass a drug test does not fit within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches. Pp. 313-323. (a) It is uncontested that Georgia's drug-testing requirement, imposed by law and enforced by state officials, effects a search within the meaning of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. The pivotal question here is whether the searches are reasonable. To be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment, a search ordinarily must be based on individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. See Vernonia, 515 U. S., at 652-653. But particularized exceptions to the main rule are sometimes
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