520 U.S. 305 (1997)
In 1990 the Georgia Legislature approved a statute ordering that each candidate seeking to qualify for nomination or election to a state office must certify that the candidate has tested negative for illegal drugs.1
The statute lists the covered offices as Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State School Superintendent, Commissioner of Insurance, Commissioner of Agriculture, Commissioner of Labor, Justices of the Supreme Court, Judges of the Court of Appeals, judges of the superior courts, district attorneys, members of the General Assembly, and members of the Public Service Commission.2 It requires submission of a urine specimen within thirty days before qualifying, testing for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, and phencyclidines at a state-approved laboratory or the candidate's personal physician, and presentation of a certificate reporting negative results.3
In May 1994, approximately one month before the qualifying deadline, Libertarian Party nominees Walker L. Chandler for Lieutenant Governor, Sharon T. Harris for Commissioner of Agriculture, and James D. Walker for the General Assembly filed suit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against Governor Zell D. Miller and two other state officials responsible for administering the statute.4 The complaint sought declaratory and injunctive relief barring enforcement of the testing requirement.5
The District Court denied a preliminary injunction in June 1994.6 The candidates submitted to the tests, obtained the required certificates, and appeared on the 1994 ballot.7 After the election the parties jointly moved for entry of final judgment on stipulated facts, and in January 1995 the District Court entered judgment for the defendants.8
A divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the District Court's judgment.9 The Supreme Court granted certiorari in 1996.10
Whether Georgia's statute requiring candidates for designated state offices to certify that they have tested negative for illegal drugs is consistent with the Fourth Amendment?11
Under the Fourth Amendment, a search ordinarily must be based on individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.12 Particularized exceptions to the main rule are sometimes warranted based on special needs beyond the normal need for law enforcement.13 When such special needs are alleged in justification of a Fourth Amendment intrusion, courts must undertake a context-specific inquiry examining closely the competing private and public interests advanced by the parties.14 A search may be reasonable despite the absence of individualized suspicion.15 This occurs where the privacy interests implicated by the search are minimal and where an important governmental interest furthered by the intrusion would be placed in jeopardy by a requirement of individualized suspicion.
No. Georgia's statute effects a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment by requiring candidates to submit to urinalysis testing and present a certificate of negative results.16 The State has failed to demonstrate a special need sufficient to justify this suspicionless search because nothing in the record indicates any concrete danger of drug use by state officials, the testing regime is not well designed to identify or deter violators given that candidates control the timing of the test within a thirty-day window and can abstain in advance, and the covered offices do not involve the high-risk safety-sensitive tasks or unique drug interdiction roles present in the programs upheld in Skinner, Von Raab, and Vernonia.17
Georgia's drug-testing requirement for candidates does not fit within the closely guarded category of constitutionally permissible suspicionless searches and therefore violates the Fourth Amendment.18
Related opinions on this issue
Chief Justice Rehnquist dissented.19 He argued that the majority distorted Fourth Amendment doctrine because of the novelty of Georgia's law even though states may serve as laboratories for novel social experiments under the federal system.20
He contended that the special needs inquiry requires only a governmental purpose other than law enforcement rather than an especially great importance.21 He also contended that the risks of bribery and blackmail for high-level state officials using illegal drugs are at least as significant as those for Customs officials in Von Raab.22 Rehnquist emphasized that the urinalysis procedure is minimally intrusive because the candidate may produce the specimen at his own doctor's office.23 He concluded that the test is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment so that the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be affirmed.24