Why Drug Testing and Vaccine Mandates are Legal and Appropriate

Employee Privacy – Drug Testing vs. Mandatory Vaccinations

Mandatory vaccinations and various drug-testing regimens have long been used in the American workplace as a condition of employment in an effort to protect organizations as well as individual employees. Many Americans, however, are adamantly opposed to Covid-19 vaccine mandates, some to the point of resigning or even becoming violent in response to them despite having been already vaccinated for a laundry list of other diseases during their lives. To gain some new insights into this issue, the purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the literature to compare and contrast the benefits that employers and society receive from these policies to the degree to which they impinge upon employee privacy. In addition, a discussion concerning what criteria businesses should use in determining whether or not to enact these types of policies is followed by a summary of the research and key findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Many public health officials are dismayed by the refusal of large numbers of Americans to “get the jab” as a preventative to the Covid-19 virus. Part of this dismay relates to this reluctance despite scientific evidence that Covid-19 vaccines are safe and effective as well as the fact that Americans have been routinely vaccinated as a condition of employment or attendance at public schools for a long period of time. For example, according to a recent response from the U.S. Surgeon General (2021) concerning public skepticism and reluctance to be vaccinated against Covid-19, “Public health officials have long used vaccines and other measures to help reduce risks to American workers. There are requirements we put in place in workplaces every day to make sure that workplaces are safe” (as cited in Kali, 2021, para. 4).

Notwithstanding the guarantees of individual privacy and protections against unwarranted intrusions set forth in the Fourth Amendment, there is nothing in the U.S. Constitution that prevents employers from mandating vaccinations, and the vast majority of Americans have accepted this reality in the past. Indeed, new recruits in the armed forces are vaccinated against a host of diseases, some of which they may never need (such as plague) but are nevertheless mandated and accepted as a condition of service. Likewise, employees at zoological parks and health care organizations are typically required to be vaccinated against known viral risks and the list goes on.

Similarly, employers can also require drug-testing as a condition of employment based on the need to keep intoxicated workers from harming themselves or others, diminishing their productivity or simply as a matter of moral judgment on the part of management concerning the use of illicit drugs (Lvovsky, 2018). Here again, the Fourth Amendment protections against invasions of privacy generally do not apply to drug-testing regimens because they too are regarded as a condition of voluntary employment which workers can easily terminate if they object. Indeed, even the most die-hard critics of drug-testing would likely want to know that firefighters, law enforcement authorities or their heart surgeon are not high on something that would affect their performance.