## Facts

- The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), acting under statutory railroad-safety authority, issued regulations responding to evidence that employee alcohol and drug use had contributed to serious train accidents.
- Subpart C required railroads to ensure blood and urine testing of covered employees after specified major accidents or incidents.
- Subpart D authorized (but did not require) railroads to conduct breath and/or urine testing of covered employees who violated specified safety rules.
- The Railway Labor Executives’ Association and member unions filed a facial Fourth Amendment challenge seeking to enjoin the testing regulations.
- The district court granted summary judgment for federal officials, upholding the regulations.
- The Ninth Circuit reversed, ruling that individualized suspicion was essential to Fourth Amendment reasonableness for toxicological testing.
- The Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether the FRA drug and alcohol testing required or authorized by the regulations constitutes a Fourth Amendment “search” attributable to the government.
2. Whether the warrantless and suspicionless testing regime is “reasonable” under the Fourth Amendment.

## Decision

- The Court held that collection and chemical analysis of blood, breath, and urine under the regulations are Fourth Amendment searches.
- The Court found government action:
  - Subpart C testing was compelled by federal regulation, making railroads agents or instruments of the government for this purpose.
  - Subpart D testing, though discretionary for railroads, was sufficiently encouraged and structured by federal regulation—through preemption and federal access to samples/results—to be treated as government-involved searching.
- Applying a balancing test, the Court upheld Subparts C and D as facially reasonable without warrants or individualized suspicion.
- The Court concluded that railroad safety presents a special need beyond ordinary law enforcement that justifies departures from the usual warrant and individualized-suspicion requirements.
- The Court rejected the view that the tests must be limited to detecting only immediate impairment, holding that deterrence and prevention in safety-sensitive work supported the program’s design.

## Legal Principles

- Collection and laboratory testing of biological specimens (blood, breath, urine) for alcohol or drugs is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment.
- Private entities’ testing can be treated as governmental searching when federal regulations compel the testing or materially encourage and participate in it (including removing legal barriers and securing governmental access to results).
- Under the special-needs doctrine, suspicionless and warrantless searches may be reasonable when conducted for compelling public-safety objectives distinct from ordinary criminal investigation.
- Fourth Amendment reasonableness in administrative safety programs turns on balancing the privacy intrusion against the governmental interest, considering the regulated setting and safeguards that limit discretion and arbitrariness.
- In pervasively regulated, safety-critical industries, employees’ expectations of privacy may be reduced for narrowly directed safety measures.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld FRA post-accident and safety-rule-violation drug and alcohol testing rules, holding that the testing constitutes Fourth Amendment searches but is reasonable without warrants or individualized suspicion because railroad safety creates a special need beyond routine law enforcement.


Skinner v. Ry. Lab. Execs.’ Ass’n, 489 U.S. 602 (1989)