Judge Blocks Justice Dept. Drug Tests

WASHINGTON — A federal judge here Friday blocked the Justice Department from forcing its employees to submit to random urine testing, ruling that there was no evidence of a drug problem at the department to justify infringing on the constitutional rights of “trusted and apparently law-abiding employees.”

U.S. District Judge George H. Revercomb granted a permanent injunction against the testing. At a later hearing he rebuffed an emergency request by the department to permit the plan to go forward while the case is on appeal.

The ruling came in a suit by 42 department lawyers and other employees who assert that the plan to require those in certain “sensitive positions” to submit to random testing violates their constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.

The suit has attracted significant public attention because it pits some of the Justice Department’s own lawyers against the architects of the drug testing plan, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III and other top department officials.