76
Opinion of the Court
that the evidence of consent was insufficient to sustain the jury's verdict. 186 F. 3d, at 487-488.
We granted certiorari, 528 U. S. 1187 (2000), to review the appellate court's holding on the "special needs" issue. Because we do not reach the question of the sufficiency of the evidence with respect to consent, we necessarily assume for purposes of our decision—as did the Court of Appeals—that the searches were conducted without the informed consent of the patients. We conclude that the judgment should be reversed and the case remanded for a decision on the consent issue.
III
Because MUSC is a state hospital, the members of its staff are government actors, subject to the strictures of the Fourth Amendment. New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 335-337 (1985). Moreover, the urine tests conducted by those staff members were indisputably searches within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 U. S. 602, 617 (1989).9 Neither the District Court nor the Court of Appeals concluded that any of the nine criteria used to identify the women to be searched provided either probable cause to believe that they were using cocaine, or even the basis for a reasonable suspicion of such use. Rather, the District Court and the Court of Appeals viewed the case as one involving MUSC's right
9 In arguing that the urine tests at issue were not searches, the dissent attempts to disaggregate the taking and testing of the urine sample from the reporting of the results to the police. See post, at 92. However, in our special needs cases, we have routinely treated urine screens taken by state agents as searches within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment even though the results were not reported to the police, see, e. g., Chandler v. Miller, 520 U. S. 305 (1997); Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U. S. 646 (1995); Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 U. S. 602, 617 (1989); Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U. S. 656 (1989), and respondents here do not contend that the tests were not searches. Rather, they argue that the searches were justified by consent and/or by special needs.
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