Commercial driver's licenses and random drug screenings

If your job requires you to hold a commercial driver’s license (CDL), you are most likely subject to random drug screening.  Under federal law, most major employers of commercial drivers are responsible for administering drug-testing programs that comply with Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations.  Employers who fail to do so can receive harsh federal penalties.  These penalties also extend to the drug-testing facilities that contract with employers for DOT compliance purposes.  Employers and drug testing labs are naturally very keen on avoiding these penalties. If you test positive for illegal drugs even though you know that you have not been using such substances, do not expect your employer to have your back, no matter how irregular the circumstances of your positive test result may have been.Recently, I represented a man in his sixties who had been driving semi-trucks, and subject to regular random urine drug screening, his entire adult life.  For the first time ever he tested positive for an illegal substance (yes, this substance is even illegal in Washington and Colorado), and was immediately terminated by his employer.   The Department of Licensing (DOL) then summarily disqualified him from holding a CDL, subject to an administrative law hearing.  My investigation showed that the chain of custody for my client’s urine sample was flawed, and that the sample that tested positive could not be conclusively linked to him. Under DOT regulations, all positive test results must be sent to an independent Medical Review Officer (MRO), who, upon request, must conduct a new test of a “split” of the positive sample.  The MRO supposedly conducted this test, and the results were predictably the same.Nearly every aspect of the confirmatory testing by the MRO was non-compliant with DOT regulations.  I brought this to the employer’s attention, and its response was to defend the MRO and to deny any problem with the drug testing of my client.  Fortunately, following the administrative law hearing, DOL recognized that the positive test result was flawed, and reversed the order to revoke my client’s CDL.  All the MRO would have had to do was cancel the flawed drug test and treat it as an aberration (any lab can be expected to make an occasional mistake).    Instead, we will be asking DOT to investigate the facility.  And my client’s former employer will have to pay him for the economic damage he suffered as a result of the employer’s decision to throw him under the bus rather than acknowledge the deficiencies of its MRO.