Reading Room Document

Mandatory Urinalysis to Test Drug Dependency [follow-up opinion]

Building on an earlier memorandum considering the permissibility under the Fourth Amendment of mandatory urinalysis on people arrested for federal offenses (to identify people on whom the state might impose drug treatment as a bail condition), the OLC concluded that a proposed scheme of a preliminary search for needle marks followed by a urinalysis only in those cases where there was evidence of substantial needle use would likely satisfy the Fourth Amendment. The OLC reasoned that the proposed search for needle marks was less of an intrusion on personal privacy than the original proposal requiring all arrestees to submit to urinalysis.

June 6, 1974