Among the various types of employee drug testing conducted, four categories standout as the most common:
- pre-employment testing is conducted prior to hiring a new employee to prevent hiring of people that use illegal drugs;
- reasonable suspicion testing is conducted when the employee’s supervisor observes signs, symptoms, or other unusual behavior sufficient to justify a reasonable belief that the employee is under the influence of drugs or alcohol;
- post-accident testing is conducted following a workplace accident to determine whether drugs or alcohol contributed to the event; and
- random testing is conducted in an unannounced and unpredictable manner and, in part, is intended as a deterrent to drug use.
Connecticut law generally prohibits private-sector employers from requiring employees to undergo random drug tests unless the state labor commissioner has designated their occupations as high-risk or safety-sensitive. If a job does not fall into this category, an employer must have a reasonable suspicion that the employee is under the influence of alcohol or drugs and that it is affecting, or could affect, his job performance before he may require a test. The test itself must be conducted according to specified requirements. Employers may also test prospective employees as long as the tests meet the requirements and applicants are notified ahead of time.
Generally, state and municipal employees are not covered by the state law but are protected by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government from carrying out unreasonable searches (there are exceptions to this that are addressed below). The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that urine tests are searches and that the Fourth Amendment applies to governments acting as employers. The Court has also ruled that probable cause or individualized suspicion is not always a prerequisite for testing to be reasonable. Instead, it requires a weighing of the urgency of the government's need to carry out the drug testing against the individual's privacy rights.
Federal law and regulations require interstate operators of commercial vehicles over a certain size, including state and municipal employees, to undergo drug tests before they are hired, after serious accidents, and when there is a reasonable suspicion that they are under the influence of drugs. The General Assembly has extended these federal requirements to intrastate operators of commercial vehicles and also allows employers to test operators of smaller vehicles, mechanics who service commercial vehicles, and forklift operators.
The state government requires pre-employment drug testing only for correction officers, state police, and certain other high-risk executive branch jobs, such as job types listed as high-risk or safety-sensitive by the state Department of Labor (DOL). Once an employee is working, tests are allowed only on the basis of reasonable suspicion, if at all. State and municipal employees who have to hold commercial drivers' licenses (CDL) to do their jobs are covered by the federal and state transportation drug testing requirements.
In the private sector, pre-employment drug testing is fairly common. There are no good figures on how widespread current employee testing is among Connecticut employers. However, recent national surveys show about 36% of companies nationwide employ some form of post-employment testing.
There are no federal or state statutes that cover drug testing of students in public schools. Students do not have the same level of constitutional rights as free adults and a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision permits schools to conduct random drug testing of students who participate in extracurricular activities. But according to the State Department of Education drug testing cannot be a condition for attending school or for participating in school-related activities mandated by law.
