[JURIST] The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit [official website] ruled Wednesday that a Florida law [text] mandating welfare applicants undergo drug tests before receiving benefits is unconstitutional [opinion, PDF]. The law, which applied to all applicants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), was enacted in July 2011 and was in effect until October 2011, when a preliminary injunction placed a hold [CBS Report] on the drug tests. The court said the law violated the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches, and that the state failed to show there was a special need for the mandatory tests among applicants, or a difference in levels of drug use between welfare applicants and the general population. The court said:

Of course, citizens do not abandon all hope of privacy by applying for government assistance. By virtue of poverty, TANF applicants are not stripped of their legitimate expectations of privacy—they are not employees in dangerous vocations or students subject to the parens patriae power of the state.

During the time the law was in effect, only 2.67 percent of welfare applicants who underwent drug testing tested positive.

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding testing welfare applicants since the law was put into effect, with critics saying the law is indeed unconstitutional, and that it may hurt families [JURIST op-eds]. In September 2011 the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida [advocacy website] filed a federal class action lawsuit [JURIST report], and the US District Court for the Middle District of Florida [official website] began reviewing the lawsuit [JURIST report] later that month. The following month the court temporarily blocked the law and Eleventh Circuit upheld the injunction [JURIST report] the block in 2013.