## Facts

- Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation (ENCOR), a state agency, provided services to people with intellectual disabilities.
- An ENCOR employee died of AIDS.
- In response, agency officials adopted a personnel policy requiring mandatory blood testing for HIV (the virus associated with AIDS) and hepatitis B for employees in specified job titles.
- The policy was aimed at positions involving close, frequent contact with clients, including situations in which clients might bite or scratch employees.
- The policy reserved the agency’s ability to expand mandatory testing beyond the listed job titles.
- The deceased employee had reportedly been bitten and scratched repeatedly, yet the agency did not notify or test the clients who may have been exposed at the time.
- The record did not show widespread sexual abuse of clients by agency employees.
- The policy required employees not only to submit to blood testing but also to receive the results (employees could not opt out of learning them).
- A group of affected employees filed a class action seeking to stop implementation of the mandatory testing policy, alleging it violated the Fourth Amendment.

## Issues

1. Whether a state employer’s mandatory blood testing of employees for HIV and hepatitis B constitutes a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
2. Whether the testing policy was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment given the employees’ privacy and bodily integrity interests and the agency’s asserted health and safety concerns.
3. Whether suspicionless, job-title-based testing—paired with an agency reservation to expand testing—was sufficiently justified and limited to satisfy Fourth Amendment reasonableness.

## Decision

- The court held that compelled blood testing by a state employer is a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
- The court found the employees had strong interests in bodily integrity and medical privacy, especially given the sensitive and stigmatizing nature of HIV-related information.
- The court concluded the agency’s justification rested largely on generalized fear and speculative workplace-transmission concerns, rather than a demonstrated risk that matched the scope of the program.
- The court determined that the policy’s breadth (including its ability to expand testing) was not adequately connected to a concrete, evidence-based need.
- The court held the mandatory HIV and hepatitis B testing policy was an unreasonable search and permanently enjoined enforcement of the challenged provisions.

## Legal Principles

- A compulsory blood draw ordered by the government, including by a public employer, is a Fourth Amendment search.
- The Fourth Amendment permits certain suspicionless searches only when the government shows a sufficient, non-speculative need and the search is reasonable in scope and method when weighed against the privacy intrusion.
- In the public-employment setting, courts assess reasonableness by balancing the employees’ bodily integrity and medical privacy interests against the employer’s health and safety interests, considering the actual risk addressed and the fit between the risk and the testing program.
- A mandatory medical testing program may be unreasonable when the asserted health risk is not supported by the record and the program sweeps more broadly than the demonstrated need.

## Conclusion

In *Glover v. Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation*, the district court held that ENCOR’s job-title-based, mandatory blood testing for HIV and hepatitis B—adopted after an employee’s AIDS-related death—was a Fourth Amendment search that was unreasonable on the facts presented, and the court permanently enjoined enforcement of the challenged testing policy.


Glover v. Eastern Nebraska Community Office of Retardation, 686 F. Supp. 243 (1988)