No, Kentucky State Employees, They Cannot Random Drug Test You

A substantial number of Kentucky state employees - nobody knows how many because each cabinet sets its own rules - are forced to submit to obviously unconstitutional random drug tests.

Many of them - under threat of losing their jobs - signed waivers of their Fourth Amendment right against warrantlesss search and seizure.

Now the Supreme Court has essentially told the State of Florida it cannot do the same.  Will anyone in Kentucky care enough to stop violating its employees' constitutional rights?

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal by Florida Governor, Republican and presidential-candidate wannabe Rick Scott. Scott, since 2011, has been trying to mandate random drug tests for some 85,000 state workers because, yeah, drugs are bad or something. Scott’s executive order did not apply only to employees, such as drivers or pilots, whose duties might in fact be severely affected by drug use. Everybody, from receptionists to scuba divers, would be subject. By refusing to reopen the case, the Supreme Court agreed that Scott’s order was so broad as to violate Constitutional protections against unwarranted search and seizure.

The excuse for Kentucky's random drug tests has been that it is limited to "severely affected" employees. But in fact, it is forced on office workers who have no dangerous duty but who happen to work for a cabinet with thousands of employees, a handful of whom fall into the "severely affected" category. Over the last several years, unconstitutional random drug testing has become standard procedure, accepted by thousands as the price of keeping their jobs.

Shame on Governor Steve Beshear and the Kentucky General Assembly if they do not use this Supreme Court refusal to return to a constitutional regimen of drug testing only for probable cause.