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- Title
TESTING OUR TEACHERS.
- Authors
McKinley, Andrew
- Abstract
In recent years, a number of school districts have begun drug testing their teachers, only to find that the Supreme Court's special needs exception is failing. As it has in other corners of its Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, the Court has erected an exception predicated on a vague "reasonableness" standard, the application of which often varies with the ad hoc interpretations of individual courts. Courts assessing the applicability of the special needs exception to the drug testing of public school teachers have, in the absence of clear analytical guideposts, found a patchwork of inconsistent judicial opinions. As a result, school boards wishing to implement drug testing policies find themselves in a difficult situation, uncertain where their obligation to protect their students must give way to their teachers' reasonable expectations of privacy. The example of teacher drug testing is but one example of where the special needs exception has left government employers uncertain as to 'their ability to act. This Comment represents an effort to infuse a degree of certainty into the Court's drug testing cases specifically and the special needs doctrine generally. In so doing, it identifies two areas in which the Court's current special needs analysis lacks sufficiently robust standards to provide meaningful guidance to lower courts: the front-end "special need" designation and the evaluation of the particular drug testing policy's efficacy. Looking to the Court's drug testing cases, this Comment identifies three analytical standards that must be present for a court to find a special need. Utilizing social-control theory and utilitarian theories of punishment, it then fleshes out the efficacy prong into a comprehensive framework for assessing the particular circumstances in which a particular drug testing policy actually advances the purported need. Finally, the Comment takes these new analytical tools and applies them to the case of teacher drug testing. This discussion illustrates the potential for a principled, consistent framework for protecting individual privacy without unduly limiting the government's ability to act.
- Subjects
UNITED States; DRUG use testing laws; LEGAL status of teachers; UNITED States. Supreme Court; CONSTITUTIONAL law; SCHOOL board laws; RIGHT of privacy
- Publication
Emory Law Journal, 2012, Vol 61, Issue 6, p1493
- ISSN
0094-4076
- Publication type
Article