Taylor v. O'Grady
| Decision Date | 01 November 1989 |
| Docket Number | No. 88-1783,88-1783 |
| Citation | 888 F.2d 1189 |
| Parties | , 4 Indiv.Empl.Rts.Cas. 1569 Yvonne TAYLOR, individually and on behalf of all others similarly situated, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. James E. O'GRADY, in his official capacity as Sheriff of Cook County, Illinois; Philip T. Hardiman, in his official capacity as the Executive Director of the Cook County Department of Corrections, and the County of Cook, Illinois, a body corporate and politic, Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
James D. Holzhauer, Mayer, Brown & Platt, Harvey M. Grossman, Alan K. Chen, Chicago, Ill., for plaintiffs-appellees.
Frank J. Parkerson, Asst. State's Atty., Office of the State's Attorney of Cook County, Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants.
Before CUMMINGS and FLAUM, Circuit Judges, and ESCHBACH, Senior Circuit Judge.
Defendants James O'Grady, Sheriff of Cook County, and Spencer Leak, 1 Executive Director of the Cook County Department of Corrections ("Department") appeal the decision of the district court enjoining them from continuing mandatory urinalysis screening for all employees of the Department. For the reasons stated below, we find the injunction to be over-broad and remand the case for modification of the injunction consistent with this opinion.
Defendant O'Grady is the Cook County, Illinois, Sheriff, the highest-ranking law enforcement officer of the County. The Illinois General Assembly has included within his office the Cook County Department of Corrections. Ill.Rev.Stat. ch. 125 p 202. Among the powers delegated to the Sheriff is the authority to appoint the Department's Executive Director, defendant Leak, who is responsible for the management and operation of the Department. The Executive Director's authority extends to the employees and activities of this facility, including the formulation and implementation of personnel policies and regulations for the Cook County Jail. Pursuant to the authority of their offices, the individual defendants ratified and implemented Departmental General Order 9.8A, which provides for an annual mandatory urine testing program ("AMUT") effective August 26, 1986, for all employees of the Department. 2
The AMUT program, as its full name suggests, is a systematic urinalysis program designed to detect the use of illegal drugs by Department correctional employees. Under the program every correctional officer and correctional supervisor 3 of the Department would be compelled to produce a urine specimen once each year for chemical analysis. A correctional officer would have no advance notice of the specific day on which she would be required to produce a urine specimen. Officers scheduled for testing would be advised during the roll call at the beginning of their shift that they must produce a urine specimen that day. They would then be taken to a holding area where they would remain until they could produce a urine specimen. Under the program, they would have until the close of the shift to produce a specimen. If not, the unsuccessful, presumably unwilling, officer could be terminated.
Immediately prior to producing a specimen, officers would be requested, but not required, to specify medical information relating to their drug and medical history. The purpose of the inquiry is informational and precautionary; in the event of a false positive urinalysis result, the officer would have on record prior recorded responses to help explain that result.
Each officer to be tested would be accompanied to a restroom by a testing administrator of the same sex. Prior to her admission, the restroom would be searched for any objects, articles, or materials which may corrupt the specimen. The officer would then be subjected to a pat-down search. Thereafter, the administrator would hand her a cup to urinate into and admit the officer to the restroom for that purpose. The testing administrator would maintain "some visual contact" of the officer from a "discreet" distance. The general order does not require or recommend direct observation of the flow of urine from the officer's body into the cup unless the investigator has reason to believe that the officer might attempt to falsify her sample by, for example, switching samples or substituting water for the urine specimen. Ordinarily, women officers would be allowed to produce a specimen within a stall with the door closed, while male officers would use a urinal.
The officer's specimen would be placed in two separate containers, sealed, and sent to the Department. Then one container would be opened and the specimen analyzed for the presence of marijuana, cocaine, and opiates through the Enzyme Multiplied Immunoassay Test ("EMIT"). If the EMIT test is positive, the opened container would be resealed and, along with the unopened container, sent to the Met-Path Laboratories in Wood Dale, Illinois, for a second analysis utilizing the Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectroscopy test ("GCMS"). 4 If the second test also proved positive, the officer would have the option of having another GCMS test performed upon the sample.
If the second GCMS failed to confirm the previous positive results, no action would be taken against the officer. If, however, the second GCMS test produced the same positive result, or if the officer declined to have a second GCMS performed, she would be presented with the option of entering a treatment program for drug abusers or, if she declined to enter the treatment program, the Sheriff could file a complaint with the Cook County Police and Corrections Merit Board seeking termination of the officer. If the officer entered the drug treatment program she would be compelled to produce urine specimens for analysis twice each month for the next six months. The Sheriff could seek the officer's discharge if any of these specimens produced a positive result, if the officer "fails to successfully complete the program," or if following the completion of the drug treatment program any of the officer's regular AMUT specimens produced a positive result.
Following the announcement of the planned implementation of the AMUT program, the plaintiffs initiated this lawsuit. They comprise a certified class of all correctional officers and correctional supervisors, 5 approximately 1700 persons in total, who seek to have the Department enjoined from continuing the AMUT program. Premising their lawsuit on 42 U.S.C. Secs. 1983, 1988, and 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2201, they argue that the urinalysis testing violates the fourth amendment. They also seek a declaratory judgment that the program is unconstitutional.
Following a bench trial, Judge Getzendanner issued a declaratory judgment that the AMUT program violates the fourth amendment and therefore enjoined the Department from implementing the AMUT program. Taylor v. O'Grady, 669 F.Supp. 1422 (N.D.Ill.1987). At trial and continuing here on appeal, the Department has advanced three interests to be served by the AMUT program. First, the Department argues that the AMUT program will maintain an unimpaired work force, a work force otherwise said to be infected to some degree with drug abuse. Second, the Department believes the program will prevent correctional officers from smuggling illegal drugs into the Cook County Jail and selling the drugs to the inmate population. Finally, the AMUT program is said to foster the public's perception of the integrity of the correctional officers as law-abiding law enforcement personnel.
Based on exhibits and testimony relating to the incidence of both drug abuse and drug-trafficking by correctional officers, the district judge concluded that drug abuse or drug trafficking among the correctional officers occurred in rates similar to that of the general population. The court found support for Dr. Schnoll's expert testimony concluding that alcohol, which the AMUT program would not detect is the most common substance abused, and that the numbers of non-alcohol substance abusers in society at large and therefore at the jail were relatively low; Dr. Schnoll's statistical determinations based on rates of abuse in the general population indicated that only three of 1700 correctional officers were chronic drug abusers and might possibly sell drugs to prisoners. The district judge also found that a serious drug smuggling problem was present within the prison, but she also accepted evidence that most of the smuggled drugs probably came from sources other than the correctional officers, such as the prisoners' visitors.
As for the Department's interest in ensuring that its work force is not impaired, Judge Getzendanner agreed that the planned testing procedure was indeed accurate, but concluded that a positive result merely indicated that an officer had abused a drug at some time, not necessarily while she was working. Moreover, based primarily on the testimony of Dr. Schnoll, Judge Getzendanner found that trained supervision combined with concomitant effective disciplinary procedures, was a less intrusive measure than the AMUT program that would effectively detect chronic drug abusers and those officers impaired while on duty, and consequently would sufficiently reduce the drug abuse problem at the prison.
With these findings of fact established, the district court then engaged in a fourth amendment analysis. While recognizing that the AMUT program may be justified in its inception as reasonably related to some legitimate government interests, the court determined that the program nevertheless failed to advance those interests significantly. The district judge reasoned that the AMUT program was unnecessarily intrusive since trained supervision, a far less intrusive method of promoting the Department's interests, was at least as successful as urinalysis, and should detect the chronic drug abusers...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
University of Colorado Through Regents of University of Colorado v. Derdeyn
... ... Thornburgh, 878 F.2d 484, 491-92 (D.C.Cir.1989); county correctional employees with regular access to prisoners or weapons, Taylor v. O'Grady, 888 F.2d 1189, 1199, 1201 (7th Cir.1989); and police officers who carry firearms or participate in drug interdiction efforts, Guiney v ... ...
-
Garrett v. Clarke
... ... Among these are the risk created 552 F.Supp.3d 559 by impaired employees and the risk created by employees smuggling drugs in. See Taylor v. O'Grady , 888 F.2d 1189, 1196-97 (7th Cir. 1989) ; McDonell , 809 F.2d at 1308. Four Courts of Appeals have held that the government had a ... ...
-
Luck v. Southern Pacific Transportation Co.
... ... Employees v. Skinner, supra, 885 F.2d at pp. 890-893); county correctional employees with regular access to prisoners and weapons (Taylor v. O'Grady (7th Cir.1989) 888 F.2d 1189, 1199, 1201); and sworn and civilian police personnel who carry firearms or participate in drug interdiction ... ...
-
Hansen v. California Dept. of Corrections, C-95-2251 WDB.
... ... In Taylor v. O'Grady, 888 F.2d 1189, 1201 (7th Cir.1989), the court held that a county was permitted to annually test for drugs all correctional employees who ... ...
-
Employee Drug Testing
...conduct or assist in grand jury proceedings, or whose assigned positions and duties include the prosecution of criminal cases.") [FN63]. 888 F.2d 1189 (7th Cir.1989). [FN64]. 888 F.2d at 1201. [FN65]. 918 F.2d 968 (D.C.Cir.1990). [FN66]. 918 F.2d at 977. [FN67]. Id. [FN68]. 931 F.2d 1286 (8......
-
Employer drug testing: disparate judicial and legislative responses.
...to identify any compelling interest justifying the drug testing of all applicants). (113) See id. at 1115. (114) See Taylor v. O'Grady, 888 F.2d 1189, 1201 (7th Cir. 1989) (noting employees cannot be tested if they 1) do not have access to firearms, 2) if there is no way to smuggle drugs to......