Imagine a workplace in which just doing a perfect job, day in, day out, is not enough to keep you on the payroll. Your attendance is perfect; your reviews, flawless; your dependability, unquestioned by employers - but on top of this, you routinely must submit to very intrusive - even humiliating - searches, just to prove that you are worthy to keep around.
Mesa fire Capt. Craig Petersen won't pee in a cup.
He says he has never even sampled an illegal drug. If this is true, his job is not at risk as long as he consents to take the test. For Petersen, that is beside the point: Search without suspicion is an invasion of privacy and an infringement upon his rights as a man with a clean record.
Capt. Petersen is right. He should be able to keep his fluids to himself, unless there is evidence of illegal behavior. Moreover, the policy of forced random drug testing places the burden of proof in the wrong place - on the innocent.
Random drug tests have a sort of witch-hunt quality - looking for problems when there is no evidence to suggest any. If firefighters are driving around stoned, they ought to be relieved of their duty. But it seems unlikely that such behavior would go completely unnoticed by colleagues. It seems even more unlikely that a stoned firefighter would continually receive outstanding reviews.
Petersen won his first case in 2001, but it was overturned, and he's fighting again this week in the Arizona Supreme Court. He told The Arizona Republic he believes that just as police have to prove probable cause to search a home, city officials must have probable cause to make him hand over his urine.
What's admirable about Capt. Petersen's case is that he's willing to fight for this seemingly meaningless principle: his right to have his innocence assumed. He's had 27 years of impeccable performance at work, and this is not enough to clear him of what amounts to an accusation that he may be on drugs.
Institutions and businesses are free to draw up their own policies and systems of work appraisal, and random drug tests are given in many workplaces.
But random drug testing is the sort of cookie-cutter approach to workplace problems that cultivates anger and resentment among workers. Employers have no idea who might be on drugs, so they punish everyone by making them submit to these tests. We're all supposed to be treated equally, which is great - but if that means we all are to be treated like drug users unless we deliver clean urine, something doesn't add up.
It can be quite a struggle to keep employer-employee relations healthy. Why strain them further with unnecessary invasions of privacy? For a fire captain, a person whose job demands that his life be risked, it seems unnecessary to demand his bodily fluids, too.
If Petersen is truly clean, some might say the drug test is a moot point. But if we continue to hand over our privacy rights without questioning policies, the thread our precious Fourth Amendment hangs by is sure to break someday.
Emily Lyons is a journalism senior. Reach her at emily.lyons@asu.edu.
