Drug testing is making a comeback

Brand new proposed regulations are now available. Here is the initial reaction from NELP:

Washington, D.C. — Following is a statement from Christine Owens, Executive Director, National Employment Law Project:

“Today, the Trump Department of Labor (DOL) released a proposed rule giving states fairly broad authority to conduct mandatory drug testing of unemployment benefit claimants and recipients. The proposal not only suffers from a number of fatal legal flaws, but more to the point, drug testing of UI applicants–when there is no basis for suspicion–is a gross insult to unemployed Americans everywhere, and a costly solution in search of a non-existent problem. Clearly, this proposal is designed to stigmatize use of an important layer of our social safety net.

“As part of a bipartisan compromise to pass the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012 (MCTRA), Congress agreed to allow states to conduct drug testing of unemployment insurance claimants under two exceedingly narrow circumstances: if a worker was discharged for use of controlled substances, or when a worker is only available for work in professions that regularly conduct drug testing. The Obama Department of Labor crafted a regulation that closely adhered to the statutory language, but upset with the bargain it struck, Congress then used the Congressional Review Act to repeal this regulation, arguing that in spite of the very narrow language in the MCTRA, states should be allowed to drug test in broader circumstances.

“State-mandated drug testing may well violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. The mere act of applying for a government program does not provide grounds to reasonably suspect a person of drug use. Indeed, when states such as Michigan and Florida tried to impose mandatory suspicion-less drug testing on all TANF applicants and recipients, federal courts intervened to stop them, finding such testing unconstitutional.

“In addition, when Congress passed the MCTRA, it not only articulated very narrow circumstances under which drug testing could be conducted, but it delegated to DOL the authority to define which occupations were covered under the law. The Trump DOL has instead essentially granted states broad authority to determine which occupations regularly conduct drug testing beyond that which is required by law, a delegation of authority not authorized by the MCTRA.

“As the proposed regulation acknowledges, the expense of such drug testing is considerable, while states’ funding to run their UI programs is at a historic low. Expanding drug testing would drain critical resources from programs that are already strapped for funds. In 2015, for example, states spent more than $850,000 on testing TANF applicants, and 321 people tested positive–a cost of approximately $2,650 per positive test. Indeed, all testing regimes yield positive results at rates substantially below the Centers for Disease Control’s estimate of 8.5 percent drug-use rate in the general population.

“Finally, this misguided proposal represents a not-so-subtle attack on the character of unemployed Americans. This intrusion into the privacy of Americans who just happen to be unlucky enough to lose their job seems rooted in a blanket assumption that unemployed workers are to blame. Drug testing is simply a lazy way of blaming the victims of larger economic trends or corporate practices such as downsizing, outsourcing, and offshoring.

“Unemployment insurance is an important economic tool to help workers, their families, and their communities deal with involuntary job loss. And NELP will lead the fight to stop this expensive, illegal, ill-conceived effort to erode this safety net.”

As noted in this newly proposed rule, Wisconsin, Texas, and Mississippi are the only states that have passed drug-testing laws for unemployment claimants that seek to implement drug-testing of some kind. The proposed rule also “claims” that drug testing will have minimal costs. Really?

If this new proposal survives court challenges, expect Wisconsin to expand drug-testing for any job sector for which the state thinks drug-testing is important in some way. I fully expect Gov. Walker to expand testing to include school employees whenever they apply for unemployment benefits. Indeed, I would not be surprised if Gov. Walker determined that every unemployment claimant should be drug-tested. After all, such tests would simply be one more obstacle claimants would have to jump through as part of the initial claim-filing process.

Federal drug testing is trying for a comeback

The current administration is trying to bring back drug testing. As of Oct. 24th, the Office of Management and Budget has approved new, proposed regulations:

As indicated here, these proposed regulations are strangely NOT economically significant, do NOT affect small entities, and have NO federalism impacts (i.e., state sovereignty remains intact). The whole point of drug testing the unemployed was to reduce the “terrible” effects of drug use on workplace productivity and safety, that this federal drug testing requirement would empower small businesses to take up this testing and thereby get a drug-free workforce at much lower costs, and that the regulation would allow states the “freedom” to implement specific drug-testing requirements. Essentially, this conclusion of NO effect on these issues is proclaiming that drug-testing the unemployed is of no importance, financially or otherwise.

The new, proposed regulations should appear in the Federal Register in the next few weeks. Only then will we know what the substance of these new requirements are.

As I noted previously here and here, there are serious problems with any new drug testing regulations given how Congress nixed the prior regulations via the Congressional Review Act. Under that law, new regulations are verboten if they are in “substantially the same form” as the disapproved regulations unless they are specifically authorized by a subsequent federal law.

In other words, these new, proposed regulations MUST be substantially different from the prior drug-testing regulations, as Congress has passed no law authorizing new regulations.

No more drug testing this year for claimants

As indicated in an earlier post, the repeal of federal drug testing regulations put in jeopardy any further drug testing of unemployment claimants until new congressional legislation is enacted.

A Bloomberg article by Josh Eidelson confirms that observation:

The effort backfired. Because the 2012 law let states test people suited for jobs specified by federal regulations, now that those regulations have been scrapped, there are no jobs for which states are able to test for drugs. Before Congress revoked Obama’s rules, states could have tested aspiring pipeline operators and commercial drivers; now they can’t.

* * *

Jeffrey Lubbers, a law professor at American University and special counsel for the Administrative Conference of the United States, says if he were the Labor Department’s lawyer, he would warn against attempting any new drug testing regulation without Congress passing a law first. “They’d be doing it under a cloud of uncertainty,” Lubbers says. “The irony of it is, now that they’ve disapproved this law, they’re in a worse position than they were before.”

As noted in the previous post, voluntary testing of job applicants by employers can still occur, as that testing is being done by employers of job applicants (and so is not Department testing of unemployment claimants). But, employers have no reason to bring the Department into the loop of applicant drug testing and to make themselves a party to litigation which does not really involve them.

Unemployment drug testing in 2017

Where other states are debating legalization of marijuana, in Wisconsin drug-testing has been the hot topic.

NOTE: Drug-testing is by-far the topic that attracts the most public attention. On this blog, traffic jumps 4X on average whenever I post something about drugs. For whatever reason, drugs are perpetually generating interest and concern.

The 2015 budget included various drug-testing efforts. As I originally described them, this testing can be divided into three parts:

1. Allowing employers who conduct pre-employment drug screenings of job applicants to report failed tests to the Department.
2. Requiring drug tests for claimants “for whom suitable work is only available in certain occupations that are federally approved for benefits eligibility testing.”
3. Requiring drug testing for claimants “for whom suitable work is only available in an occupation that regularly conducts drug testing, as determined by the Department.”

The drug testing will be described below for item 1 and then items 2 and 3 in separate sections.

Item 1: Employers’ voluntary reporting

The Department enacted emergency regulations and additional emergency regulations and then permanent regulations for the testing in Item 1. As of 28 April 2017, the Department even has a website page describing this voluntary reporting with links for the reporting forms.

These rules create DWD 131 for governing this voluntary reporting by employers. In general, these regulations create two kinds of potential disqualification for job applicants: when they test positive or when they refuse a drug test. These potential disqualifications, however, only apply when:

• the job applicant is receiving unemployment benefits at the time,
• the employer voluntarily submits the required information to the Department,
• the employer participates in an unemployment hearing should the job applicant challenge the potential disqualification,
• and, if the job applicant loses the hearing, he or she declines to participate in government-funded drug treatment/counseling.

As I explained in May 2015:

during the debate over this drug testing the Democratic members of the Joint Finance Committee were the ones pointing out the wasteful, big government spending at issue with this drug testing. The estimates were low-balled, these Democrats exclaimed, the testing and treatment will accomplish nothing, and government bureaucracy will only make finding work that much harder. WisPolitics budget blog smartly featured the Republicans’ response to these criticisms. Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield, explained: “There’s a tremendous opportunity through good public policy to make a community better.” In 1975, Ted Kennedy could not have said it better, and that is what makes this drug testing one of the strangest pieces of legislation I have ever seen.

Despite the Department’s push for this voluntary drug-testing by employers, the Department has yet to report any employer actually submitting a failed drug test or an employee refusing a drug test. It appears that this new reporting option is still a big zero, or much ado over nothing.

Items 2 and 3: Required drug-testing for federally-approved occupations and state-determined occupations

Rather than voluntary reports by employers, the drug testing for items 2 and 3 would be done by the Department as part of certain claimants’ initial claim for unemployment benefits. The questions were which claimant occupations would be subject to such drug testing, how would a claimant’s occupation be determined, and what kind of drug testing protocols would be required.

Recall that federal law is what made this drug testing possible. So, federal regulations were first needed before a state could go forward with its own testing efforts, and final regulations did not emerge from the US Dep’t of Labor until 1 August 2016. These final rules limited the occupations for drug testing to those occupations required under state or federal law for drug testing (e.g., airline pilots and inter-state truck drivers) and indicated that state law about a claimant’s occupation and suitable work would govern for determining whether that claimant was in an occupation for which testing would be required. Hence, this rule limited drug testing to occupations required under state or federal law for such testing and did not allow state agencies on their own initiative to designate occupations for drug testing.

That limitation was not to the liking of Republicans in Congress, and so they passed a joint resolution overturning these new rules, which the current President then signed into law. So, there are now no rules at present, and drug testing by the Department itself is back to square one. Indeed, drug testing for unemployment claimants when they file their initial claims is now not likely at all this year.

When new federal rules do emerge, expect the reach of drug testing to be expansive and discretionary. But, for now the only drug-testing at issue in unemployment matters are employers’ tests of job applicants that are voluntarily turned over to the Department.

NOTE: New federal rules, moreover, may not be forthcoming at all. The mechanism used to repeal the August 2016 rules — the Congressional Review Act — provides that a new rule may not be issued in “substantially the same form” as the disapproved rule unless it is specifically authorized by a subsequent federal law. See The Congressional Review Act: Frequently Asked Questions for all the details. So, without a new law by Congress, new rules for expansive drug testing are unlikely.