FLORI-DUH. It's run by wretched rampant Fourth Amendment violators, including lawyer RICHARD SCOTT, our Fifth Amendment Governor, lawyer PAM BONDI, our retaliatory Attorney General, lobbyists and the reporbates in the one-party FLORI-DUH State Legislature.
The Eleventh Circuit court of Appeals in 2012 affirmed a preiminary innjunction, and a United States Dstridt Judge December 31, 2013 entered a permanent injunction, barring the state from drug-testing everyone who applies for welfare.
United States Supreme Court decsions establish beyond peradventure that a drug test is a search. When a government drug tests people, it must have a good reason. Hating poor people is not enough.
None of the putative "facts" and reasons offered by the State of Florida passed muster, or was even admissible. Junk science, junk evidence and junk policy were rightly rejected.
Governments may lawfully drug test people involved in public heath and safety, without a reasonable suspicioun or a warrant.
They may also drug test people involved in public schools.
That's it.
This is a question of constitutional law.
Other than that, there must be some symptoms or indicia to justify a drug test.
In Florida, the rate of drug use among welfare applicants was found to be insignificant.
Among those few applicants testing found using drugs, half were merely for pot.
There was no alcohol testing.
None.
Why?
If drugs threaten famililies, what about aloholism?
Under Florida statute 414.0652, there was no testing for alchohol - only drugs -- a testimony to the power of the Liquor Lobby in Tallahassee, and an example of hypocrisy.
The drug testing cost more money than it saved, while holding out poor people for Fouth Amendment violations.
This drug obsession of Republican reprobate Florida Governor RICHARD SCOTT and Attorney General PAMELA BONDI does not distract from their being in bed with Big Business.
Picking on poor people -- how depraved and unoriginal. What do you expect from our Fifth Amendment Governor, RICHARD SCOTT?
The plaintiff, a Navy veteran, Luis Lebron, cares for his disabled mother and has sole custody of his five year old son. He declined to take a drug test. He doesn't use drugs. He resented the intrusion.
Thank you, Luis Lebron, to standing up to arbitrary power and oppression, which our American Founding Fathers wrote in our Declaration of Independence we need to stand up to with "manly firmness."
No thanks to the St. Augustine Record for a sloppy editorial on the subject this morning, all demagogy and polling and posturing and self-importance, unadorned by any indicia of reading the Judge's decision, or that of the Eleventh Circuit.
So, in an E-mail, I asked the Records' edtorial page editor if he read the decision -- his response was elliptical (it did not say either "yes" or "no").
I have sent him a link to the decision.
Repent now, Jim Sutton!
The fact that the St. Augustine Record chooses to drug test its employees is of no significance to the Fourth Amendment issue -- when the Record does it, it is not state action.
(It does indicate that the St. Augustine Record badly needs a union; here is apparently no chapter of the Newspaper Guild anywhere in the entire state of Florida).
Polling is irrelevant to constitutional rights -- it's a make-weight argument.
The fact that, even after remand from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the State of FLorida could not get past summary judgment shows that there is no merit to drug testing all welfare applicants under the Fourth Amendment.
Explaining court decisions intelligenty is what journalists are supposed to do.
Failing that, they have the right to remain silent, and we wish they would!
I am reminded of former Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings of South Carolina, who was once challenged by an opponent to take a drug test. Senator Hollings said, "I'll take a drug test when he takes an IQ test."
The Fourth Amendment lives in the State of FLorida today thanks to Luis Lebron, ACLU, and the Eleventh Circuit Courrt of Appeals and United States Dstrict Court for the Middle District of Florida.
Three cheers!
Postscript: The Record confirmed its ignorance the next day, on January 4, 2014, when it gave one of its Roman Emperor "thumbs down" to a state court of appeals for the decision of the federal courts on Florida's Fourth Amendment violations.
Not only did the Record not read the decision in quo, it doesn't even know what kind of court decided it. This is ignorance.
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