Florida Welfare Drug Testing Law Gets No Reprieve From Appeals Court
A federal appeals court upheld a lower court's injunction on Tuesday against Florida's effort to make welfare applicants pee in cups to prove they're not on drugs.
In a strongly-worded opinion, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed a lower court's October 2011 finding that Florida failed to demonstrate a special need for drug testing poverty-stricken parents who apply for cash benefits from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
"The evidence in this record does not suggest that the population of TANF recipients engages in illegal drug use or that they misappropriate government funds for drugs at the expense of their own and their children's basic subsistence," the three-judge panel wrote. "The State has presented no evidence
that simply because an applicant for TANF benefits is having financial problems, he is also drug addicted or prone to fraudulent and neglectful behavior."
America where judges have ruled it is legal to drug test those who work but not to test those who don't. Legal to test athletes but not legal to test those who sit on their butts all day. A crime to test those who don't work for their money but perfectly ok to test those who do contribute to society.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Yes, and since The State has presented no evidence that it's occurring, one can see that spending millions of taxpayer dollars to test for something there's no proof of is such a prudent expenditure.
