Court strikes down random drug testing for school employees [View All]

Source: www.volokh.com

Court Strikes Down Random Drug Test Policy for All Public School Employees: From Jones v. Graham County Bd. of Educ. (N.C. Ct. App. June 2) (some paragraph breaks added), an interesting discussion of the issue:

(Show the case excerpt.)

We first address Plaintiffs' contention that the policy violates Article I, Section 20 of the North Carolina Constitution, which provides as follows:

General warrants, whereby any officer or other person may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of the act committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are dangerous to liberty and shall not be granted.

Plaintiffs assert that “n its face, the ... policy violates the prohibition against general warrants<,>” and that the policy violates Article I, Section 20's guarantee against unreasonable searches conducted by the government.

We are inclined to agree that the policy violates the prohibition against general warrants. See In re Stumbo, 582 S.E.2d 255, 266 (2003) (Martin, J., concurring) (“

ermitting government actors ‘to search suspected places without evidence of the act committed’ ... is tantamount to issuing a general warrant expressly prohibited by the North Carolina Constitution.”). However, because we hold, for the reasons set forth below, that the Board's policy violates Article I, Section 20's guarantee against unreasonable searches, we do not reach the question of whether the policy violates the prohibition against general warrants.



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