CHARLES FOWLER, Plaintiff, v. NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION; NORMAN STEISEL, individually and in his official capacity as Deputy Commissioner for Administration of the New York City Department of Sanitation; ROBERT C. ROSS, individually and in his official capacity as Director of Personnel of the New York City Department of Sanitation, Defendants, 704 F. Supp. 1264

Summary

The employee contended that the provision of urine specimens as part of a pre-employment physical constituted a Fourth Amendment search. The court granted defendants' motion for summary judgment. The federal government could require employees in, or applicants for, positions with physical or medical standards to submit to physical examinations prior to appointment or selection. Pre-employment physical examination, including urinalysis, did not violate an applicant's expectation of privacy. The test conducted as part of the employee's pre-employment physical examination was not a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment. As a probationary employee, the employee had a diminished expectation of privacy such as to remove later tests from the category of Fourth Amendment searches. The later tests were founded on sufficient individualized suspicion to be reasonable. The intrusiveness of the search was slight. The Department had important interests at stake in continuing to test an ...