Background
In the mid-1980s, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) issued regulations to adopt safety standards for the railroad industry. Included in these regulations was mandatory blood and urine tests of employees involved in train accidents, to determine if they were using illegal narcotics. The FRA also adopted regulations that authorized railroads to administer breath and urine drug tests to employees who violated safety rules. The Railway Labor Executives' Association, an umbrella group of railway trade unions, sued to have the regulations declared an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Read more about this topic: Skinner V. Railway Labor Executives Association
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“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)