Rick Scott’s Pee Test Fails a Court Test

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/publik15/4440720319/">Publik15</a> /Flickr

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Two months ago, we told you how Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s plan to drug-test the state’s welfare recipients—at their expense—turned out to be a very costly waste of time. Now the effort has been ruled unconstitutional, too.

In a blistering 37-page opinion (PDF) issued late Monday night, federal court Judge Mary Scriven put a halt to the tea party Republican’s marquee plan, concluding that “the wholesale, suspicionless drug testing of all applicants” for Florida’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) constituted an unreasonable search in violation of the 4th Amendment. It’s just the latest setback for Scott, who’s recently come under fire for pooh-poohing nonbusiness majors, collecting cut-rate health insurance, cutting support to the disabled, building himself a military hall of fame, and imploding on a live cable news show.

“Though the State speaks in generalities about the ‘public health risk, as well as the crime risk, associated with drugs’ being ‘beyond dispute,’ it provides no concrete evidence that those risks are any more present in TANF applicants than in the greater population,” Scriven wrote in her ruling against Florida’s government. “It is not enough to simply recite a governmental interest without any evidence of a concrete threat that would be mitigated through drug testing.”

The state ACLU and the Florida Justice Institute filed the suit on behalf of one Luis Lebron, who refused to pay for the $10-to-$82 urinalysis that would have proven that he was drug free. As the ACLU of Florida’s Maria Kayanan put it:

Luis, 35, is a U.S. Navy veteran and a single father who fought to establish paternity of his son. He goes to college full-time and cares for his disabled mother. Recently, his veterans’ benefits ran out; he was living day to day on student loans and grants, teetering on the brink of poverty, so he asked the state of Florida for a helping hand and qualified for food stamps and Medicaid.

Luis also qualified for TANF, but there was a catch…He would have to give a sample of his urine to a lab and acknowledge that the state would share any negative results with Florida’s Child Abuse Hotline. Luis knew he’d test negative because he doesn’t use illegal drugs, but that wasn’t the point: he also knew that he shouldn’t have to submit to an invasive search to prove it.

Judge Scriven agreed, shooting down the notion that the state would save taxpayer money from being spent on drugs by welfare recipients. Ultimately it’s Florida that is wasting “millions of [welfare] dollars” to fund the drug tests, she wrote in her opinion. She noted that Florida attorneys had offered a pamphlet asserting that the drug plan would save money, but that “the data contained in the pamphlet is not competent expert opinion, nor is it offered as such, nor could it be reasonably construed as such…Even a cursory review of certain assumptions in the pamphlet undermines its conclusions.”

Judge Scriven also balked at state attorneys defending the law by claiming Florida’s government has a right to nanny Luis’ son. “The State contends that by being the conduit for a maximum of $241 per month in federal cash assistance for a finite period of time to TANF applicants, it somehow ‘steps into the role of the parent,'” she wrote, saying that argument was “without merit.”

She added: “Even if the State did assume some authority over the children, it does not follow that the State would be justified in drug testing their parents, whose role the State suggests it supplants.”

Who’s your daddy, Florida? Apparently, not Rick Scott.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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