By Kate Acheson
After being subjected to repeated urine-sample drug tests, a New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (“MTA”) Officer, Ada Perez, filed complaint. The MTA moved to dismiss. In Perez v. Metro. Transp. Auth., the District Court for the Southern District of New York refused to dismiss Officer Perez’s complaint, reasoning that sufficient information existed for a jury to find in Officer Perez’s favor on her unreasonable search and seizure claim.
Officer Perez’s complaint alleged that she was compelled by the MTA chief of police and the medical director of Occupational Health Services (“OHS”) to submit to urine tests on four occasions: one random drug test in January 2010 and three drug tests during work-related injury checkups in August 2009, March 2010, and July 2010. All of these tests occurred while Officer Perez was on restricted duty due to a work-related injury to her wrist from June 2009.
As to the “random” drug test, Officer Perez claims she was inappropriately compelled to take the test because she was not in a safety sensitive position – she was on restricted duty, doing office work in civilian clothes without a firearm. The complaint explains that the MTA and the union have agreed that unarmed employees and employees assigned to or performing non-safety sensitive duties for the duration of the workday are exempt from random drug tests. Based on this information, Officer Perez contends the random drug test to which she was submitted was unreasonable.
As to the injury checkup drug tests, Officer Perez claims she was inappropriately compelled to take the test because the MTA had no right to compel the tests and because she was not given the option to refuse the tests.
The complaint explains that the MTA’s policy limits non-random drug testing to pre-employment, post-accident, return to duty, and reasonable suspicion screenings. The complaint also describes how Officer Perez was not informed of her right to refuse drug testing during injury checkups until October 2010. At that time, she was told that she should have been given the option to refuse the previous drug tests in August 2009, March 2010, and July 2010. Based on this information, Officer Perez contends that the drug tests she was compelled to take before being informed of her right to refuse were unreasonable.
Considering all of the information, the District Court found that Officer Perez’s complaint had enough facts to convince a reasonable jury of her position as to the unreasonable search and seizure claims as to the random drug test and the three non-random injury checkup tests. Therefore, the District Court refused to dismiss Officer Perez’s complaint.
