Nearly all of Linn State Technical College students who were subjected to a suspicionless drug test in September 2011 will not have the results of those tests reported to the school. On March 22, United States District Judge Nanette K. Laughrey ruled that most of the 500 students who were tested, with the exception of students enrolled in the aviation maintenance, heavy equipment operations and industrial electricity programs, will likely succeed in their claim that the test violated their constitutional right to not be searched. Students enrolled in the remaining 30 programs cannot be drug tested.
Linn State Technical College, in Linn, Mo., made headlines in 2011 for requiring all incoming students to submit to a new mandatory drug testing policy, even though there were no documented problems with drugs in the college’s 50-year history. The American Civil Liberties Union of Eastern Missouri filed a lawsuit charging that the mandatory policy was unconstitutional, and a November 2011 court-ordered injunction prevented the college from testing while the case was being tried. The earlier injunction was vacated on appeal, and today’s injunction replaces it.
“Today’s decision affirms the privacy and personal dignity of hundreds of students who were forced to supply their college with urine samples before they could take any classes,” said Tony Rothert, the ACLU-EM’s legal director. “Without a compelling need, a search of your bodily fluids is exactly the type of unreasonable search and seizure that the Constitution prevents the government from imposing.”
A copy of the court’s decision can be found below. The trial on the request for a permanent injunction is scheduled for July.
