The Constitutional Implications Of Employee Urine Testing

Abstract

Whether employers may resort to compulsory urine testing to detect workplace-related drug use is one of the most hotly debated legal issues of the 1980’s.  Testing advocates stress the myriad problems that drug-impaired workers cause, including safety risks and faulty products, and they emphasize the effectiveness of this technique in identifying such employees.  Opponents grant the need for a drug-free work setting but argue that urine testing is an excessively unreliable and intrusive means of obtaining one.