Gee whiz! Ohio high court allows direct-observation urine collection

Four employees who were watched while urinating under a workplace drug screening policy didn’t have claims for invasion of privacy, the Ohio Supreme Court recently ruled in a 4-3 decision.

Facts

Sterilite of Ohio, LLC, is a privately owned manufacturing company located in Massillon, Ohio. Its employees are employed at will (i.e., they can be fired at any time for any legal reason or no reason at all) and subject to a workplace substance abuse policy. Under the policy, the employer may test employees for drugs in connection with workplace accident investigations, based on reasonable suspicion, or randomly. The policy says urinalysis will be the testing method, but it’s silent about how the samples will be collected.

Employees Peter Griffiths, Donna Lunsford, and Laura Williamson were selected for random testing in October and November 2016, and Adam Keim was chosen for a reasonable-suspicion test at about the same time. All four signed consent forms before being tested, but the forms never mentioned they would be observed while providing the samples.

The four employees alleged Sterilite began using the direct-observation sample collection method. That is, a same-sex monitor accompanied the employee to the restroom and visually observed while the individual produced the urine specimen.