Pissing Contest

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied review to a Spirit Airline pilot who had failed a urine test taken after he had landed a plane in Fort Lauderdale.

Swaters’s specimen was sent to Quest Diagnostics, Inc., an HHS-approved testing laboratory. Id. Two weeks later, Quest reported to Spirit Airlines that Swaters’s sample contained morphine at more than eight times the legal limit, a metabolite of heroin at more than 49 times the legal limit, and a metabolite of cocaine at more than 63 times the legal limit.

The court

Jeffrey Swaters, a former pilot with Spirit Airlines, challenges the Department of Transportation’s refusal to consent to the release of the urine sample it says Swaters produced for a mandatory drug test. The sample, which tested positive for controlled substances, cost Swaters his job and his airman medical certificate. See Swaters v. Osmus, 568 F.3d 1315 (11th Cir. 2009); Sturgell v. Swaters, NTSB Order No. EA-5400, 2008 WL 3272390 (2008). Swaters now wants the urine sample in order to conduct a DNA test in the hope of proving, in a state court negligence action, the urine is not his. We hold that neither the DoT’s general rule against releasing urine samples for DNA testing, nor its refusal to release the sample in this case, is arbitrary, capricious, or contrary to the Omnibus Transportation Employee Testing Act of 1991. We also hold that Swaters’s constitutional challenges to the rule fail.1 We therefore deny Swaters’s petition for review.

(Mike Frisch)