Ending the ACLU’s Drug Subsidy
Even without these legitimate, “special needs,” it is beyond serious dispute — although when has that stopped the ACLU? — that the state has a need to ensure that public welfare dollars are used by the recipients for their intended purpose — buying milk at the corner store — and not dime bags from a corner pusher.
Nevertheless, this entire legal exercise fails to appreciate the state of the law in this area.
First, there is a much lower expectation of privacy in welfare benefits cases. Welfare assistance is a heavily regulated government program in which recipients are routinely required to abide by state and federal regulations and to turn over personal and private information as a condition of receiving their benefits. Failure to play by the state’s rules often disqualifies applicants from receiving taxpayer dollars.
These diminished privacy interests are weighed against Florida’s overriding concern for the safety and well-being of the children, deterring criminal activity and drug addiction, fostering economic self-sufficiency, and ensuring that state funds are used to feed hunger not habits.
Second, the injury claimed here is the violation of a Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches. But the Supreme Court has already held that welfare applicants who do not wish to consent to a state’s search requirements are free to decline the search and forfeit the benefits. Forty years ago, the Court considered whether home searches were a reasonable condition for receiving welfare benefits. After looking at all of the valuable public interests served by the searches, the Court concluded that the state’s home-search condition was not only reasonable, but that the plaintiff was free to refuse the search but could not then complain about the benefits’ being withheld.
Likewise, Florida insists that its welfare recipients not abuse drugs on the public’s dime. Being drug-free is a condition of the people’s welfare aid, and the voluntary drug test is the reasonable mechanism used to enforce that condition.
Governor Scott and the Florida legislature enacted sound, sensible public policy aimed at protecting the state’s children and deterring substance abuse that tears at the fabric of our society. It’s not surprising that the ACLU doesn’t agree, but it’s disappointing when federal judges who should know better do not.
The Judge is a legal moron. There is no 4th Amendment right violation when a person is required to meet standards to get welfare. Welfare is not a guaranteed Constitutional right. No one is forced to provide testimony against themselves. It is a voluntary act to apply for welfare and the welfare system may have rules. Using the ALCU’s and this legal dwarf’s logic drug tests prior to being hired would also be a violation of the 4th Amendment.
Forgottenman you are so right. as a truck driver by the IDIOT judge’s reasoning MY rights have been violated for years now. I had to undergo drug screening in order to get a job to pay the tax money those dopeheads the judge and the aclu are using to buy their drugs with,
I don’t know what to say. Cops and truck drivers have to take pre-employment drug tests. In fact, cops have to take polygraph tests, the Minn. Multiphasic, and the California Personality Inventory, and sometimes the Inkblot Test. If you shoot someone in the line of duty, you have to give blood for testing. Far as I know, judges and lawyers and doctors are still exempt from mandatory pre-employment drug testing. So you would think a perfectly powerless person in the social pecking order trolling for state aid with a history of altered states of consciousness could be required to submit to chemical testing for state benefits, but what do I know? Used to be the only people who could get a no down home mortgage was a veteran of a foreign war; I guess there wasn’t enough veterans to keep the housing bubble going, so people on welfare were defined as people doing public service and deserving of no down mortgages. Thank you Barney Frank.
The judge is correct. Nobody should be subjected to drug tests in an allegedly free country. The Drug Jihad is one of the most odious violations of individual rights created by Progressive fascists. Alleged “small government” conservatives should be working to end the Drug Jihad along with welfare. Neither is authorized in the Constitution.
Sorry, no. I’m all for ending the Drug War (or actually fighting it) but if you need governmental assistance to survive you have failed the most basic test of adulthood. Welfare recipients are not sovereign individuals, they are vassals of the state. As such they have no claim to any rights, only those privileges we grant them.
The judge ruled this way simply because the welfare system was nothing more than a vote-buying scheme from the get-go, and that particular judge is part of the program. It’s pretty hard to bribe people to vote your way without either throwing some recreational chemicals into the mix (typically booze), or looking the other way when they make their own arrangements to get them.
No one is subjected to a drug test unless they’re begging from the government.
You know what this means? It means welfare is a Constitutional right.
We can only end the war on drugs when we develop instant tests and intoxication limits for driving. If we simply decriminalize or legalize drug use without those preliminary steps we will see abject carnage on our roads.
In the meantime, the judge erred greatly on this one. Collecting welfare is not a mandatory action, so the leeches are trading their privacy for dollars. On top of that, the judge should have declared welfare to be unConstitutional.
You are wrong. Everyone who wants to use drugs can get them. Everyone who wants to drive on drugs already does that. There would be no noticeable increase in danger on the roads if all “recreational” drugs were legalized tomorrow. The biggest change would be a lessening of gun violence by dealers and users, so I think there would be substantially less carnage if drugs were legalized.
I wonder if anybody thought about testing all recipients of corporate welfare ( since its our tax money) We wouldnt want taxpayers funding the coke habits of wall street types. right?
Lets keep the government out of our bodies mkay!
Yes, I would agree with drug testing anyone taking assistance.
People taking my money from me and then spending it on drugs irritates me almost as much as people who use “mkay” when discussing a serious issue.
Where did she get her law degree ? Off of a matchbook cover….?
People are compelled to get drug tested all the time. Pilots, CDL drivers, cops and firemen,nurses,students, athletes,convicts, people in the military and employees and job applicants of many many companies etc. In several states if you refuse to take a breathalyzer they can strap you in a chair against your will and draw some blood.
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. As a welfare recipient I have decided to become dependent on my productive fellow citizen (assuming I am also a citizen) who has by force surrendered a significant portion his liberty (time and labor) and personal property (money) to the state so that that it may be given to me. Therefore, I have somehow acquired a right to dictate to the fellow citizen the terms under which he will surrender his liberty and property to me. Have I got it about right? Sounds fair to me! See, I’m as smart as a federal judge.
Horace and Yooper are both trying to apply a logical, good-sense argument against the emotional tantrum.
Remember the scene in “The Andy Griffith Show” where the kid screams “I WANT MY BIKE!”? Well, back in the 60′s 99% of the people watching that show would side with Andy and agree that the “real nice woodshed out back” had a well-known use.
But, fast-forwarding 45 years, give-or-take, there are now a huge number of people who are completely confused about what rights really are. I could start with those who think they have a right to not be offended. But I’ll just keep it on the path where there are those who think they have the right to do as they please.
They have never heard the expression, “My rights end where someone else’s nose begins” as told to me by my parents and grandparents. And as has been so eloquently stated by posters here in this subject, when you are receiving money from people who worked for it, it is just not polite to use it to buy crack or booze or weed.
Let’s turn it around a little and some right-winger was unemployed and collecting disability (AKA social security) and the media found out he owned several guns and occupied his time entering target shooting competitions. The loopy lefties would have a cow when they found out his “unearned” cash was being used to buy *gasp* GUNS and BULLETS. Imagine the 12-alarm fires going off in their heads over that.
But somehow in bizarro-world, using tax money to buy illegal substances is just okie-dokie. In what universe does this make sense. Even the judge has to be on crack in this case. Or at least a Constitutional moron. But by the judge’s argument, it is against the fourth amendment for employers to drug test their employees. *sigh*…I’m having a bit of a brain-fire myself on this.
And why is a judge blocking legislation. Isn’t this more of the same from the national socialists where the judiciary branches are interfering with lawmaking? I’m no lawyer but I’ll bet a bunch of legal procedures were leap-frogged by this so-called judge for them to get their way. Or, maybe just some special bribes.
This judge probably has no problem with installing surveillance cameras all over public places as they do in Britain, and no worries about illegal search there….but….drug testing a potential candidate for welfare? Why, you would think the government is accusing them of a crime….*gasp*.
Well, I’m fairly certain the majority of Americans agree it’s a just law. Which is why the national socialists will fight it tooth and nail. It’s “ideology uber alles”. And, in my universe…it’s grounds for a new TV show called, “Idiocy On Parade”. But I always have this little fantasy that plays in my head in a movie format.
Two people are shipwrecked on Pacific island. One is a reporter for CNN. The other is a father, member of his local bowling team, works down at the Freightliner plant. The two realize their predicament and discuss it. The reporter whines about it. The other guy gets up, looks around…decides to try to find some water on the island that’s drinkable….and maybe something to use for shelter.
As the days go by, the reporter is visibly distressed. He is thirsty but the other guy brings him some water he found, just out of compassion. He then figures out how to make a fire and tries his hand at fishing and such, a la Tom Hanks in the similarly scripted movie ‘Castaway’. But the CNN reporter takes no initiative and in the end, when the other guy catches him trying to steal his food, he kills him.
Months later, he’s rescued. But he has long since disposed of the body of the reporter. A secret he takes to his grave many decades later.
If you’re not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. Another axiom that serves the conservative mind well. But the dysfunctional, liberal mind will forever be programed to think, “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine”.
Just as long as the powers that be keep reinforcing it.
Yooper you are probaly smarter than most of them. you gotta remember they all are political hacks. another low form of humanity,
Never forget the history of the ACLU, which I will not recap here.
Actually the ruling is even sillier on than you realized. When you talk to people in the business they always tell the customer that they have a job to raise their children and the compensation is welfare.
If that is the argument, then drug test is just like any pre-employment drug screening.
Now we know who this judge is: you play the fool you get treated like a fool.
Remember, the goal of the ACLU has always been to bring this country down. They have been a communist organization from the start.
What needs to be terminated is the public assistance to the ACLU and all these other organizations that claim to operate in “the public interest” whether it be real or perceived civil rights or environmental whackism. The is absolutely no way the taxpayer should be paying “legal fees” to these communists and they should be held personally responsible for the entire costs of both sides when they lose cases. This will stop the shakedown of the small government entities like school boards and counties.
If these anti-American assholes were kicked out of the public trough and were required to post bonds if they were in arrears, it would end in a heartbeat.
You bring up a good point about public funding of various groups that claim to work in the “public interest.” I was thinking back when the Supercommittee in Congress was formed that there is a whole section of government spending that could be wiped out with a simple law that would gore everbody’s ox and therefore be quite fair. Here it is: no Federal assistance of any form, cash or otherwise, shall be provided to any 501c3 based organization. If a 501c3 is truly working for the benefit of the public, let them solicit donations from the public. Supporting these groups is obviously an extra-Constitutional expenditure. Who knows how much money could be saved with this simple measure?
It is very interesting that the devotees of the welfare state ignore the well-known dictum of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: “Who will not work, shall not eat.” The Soviet Reich had its methods of ensuring this. Social parasites were sent to the Gulag—strict regime.
Let’s cut through the ACLU’s liberal hieroglyphs and state plainly what is happening: once again it is absolutely forbidden to even hint at a problem with the value system of the black community in America but taken on faith that in fact a problem with the values of white Americans exists, namely entrenched and endemic racism.
In fact, and I am speaking generally, white folks show little interest in race: look at the plethora of black culture websites with mainstream advertising and black celebrities and then realize there is not a single equivalent in the white community – that’s because white folks don’t even see themselves as a community.
Look at black made films in the last 20 years and they are almost to a man are race obsessed yet look at Hollywood films from 1930 to 1960, supposedly the height of Jim Crow and with no political correctness to stop whites from expressing any obsession with racial superiority and the difference is stark.
Something’s rotten in Denmark.
You are correct.
Whites will be “Irish-American,” or “Italian-American,” what have you, but ethnic minorities are always lumped together in some form of bastardized “Race.” Thereby providing themselves with a false monolithic presence compared to whites.
“Hispanic?” Get the hell out. Stop the nonsense, please.
Well, I mentioned the Florida law to a Maryland Social worker I met and she thought it was a great idea. Evidently even a liberal social worker can see the massive benefits to society from both cutting the demand for illegal drugs, and weaning out the habitual drunkards and drug addicts from the public trough. After 30 years of watching the idiocy of the welfare system from the inside even a brain dead liberal can begin to understand common sense. Three cheers for the elected leaders in Florida and the people that elected them, and how soon before we take this nation wide??
Let’s not forget that illegal drugs are a multi billion dollar cash business. There is no other reason for our insane policy of the War on Drugs other than to protect the margins of this illegal activity.
You can also bet that there are major “special intests” on both the D and the R side of our so called “representatives” in Congress who directly or indirectly benefit from the enormous profitability of keeping the margins on illegal drugs as high as possible for the market.
The blunt truth is that drug testing the millions of recipients of Federal and State welfare programs would dramatically effect the profitability of the illegal drug industry. Don’t doubt that they have more influence with our “Congress” and other Government officals then any mere “citizen” of the United States of America.
This was a judicial decision, not a Congressional act.
You can be required to take a drug test for a job yet not to live off those with that job who are paying taxes to pay for that freebie from the givemint? Sure sounds stupid to me judge.
Wasn’t this judge appointed by a Bush?
Occam’s razor: Governor Rick Scott owns many, if not most, of the urinalysis labs.
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