Balancing Government Necessity and Public Employee Privacy

Abstract

In the mid 1980s the Rehnquist court introduced a new constitutional doctrine making the Fourth Amendment's warrant and probably cause requirements dispensable when the government establishes a legitimate "special need." The new doctrine has been employed to allow, among other "special needs, " large-scale public employee drug testing programs that courts, applying traditional constitutional analysis, had previously struck down. Analysis of judicial implementation of the new doctrine suggests the Supreme Court's broad characterization of government's special needs may be poorly reasoned and ultimately may be constitutionally flawed An assessment of the doctrine suggests that it is predicated on traditionalist perceptions of management roles, and that it reinforces those roles.