In 1988, Congress passed the Drug Free Workplace Act, which required companies to drug-test employees as a condition of receiving federal contracts. The act was made possible by a 1975 high-court ruling that created an "administrative search exception" to the Fourth Amendment when it declared that the state's interest in a strong military outweighed the privacy rights of soldiers. The administrative search exception became the legal basis for all future drug testing.

In 1995, in Vernonia School District in Oregon v. Acton, the Supreme Court upheld drug testing of student athletes without suspicion. Vernonia said that athletes on drugs were a discipline problem. The court ruled that the athletes' safety could be affected by drug use and that they already had lower expectations of privacy. In Earls v. Tecumseh Public School District (2002), the court approved random drug testing of any student who participates in an extracurricular activity.

In his opinion for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas found that 1) "individualized suspicion" isn't necessary before testing because a school has a custodial responsibility for its students; 2) participation in nonathletic extracurricular activities diminishes the expectation of privacy; and 3) Tecumseh's demand that students pee in cups didn't invade their privacy, since an administrator stands outside the stall and results aren't forwarded on to the cops.