If its a random test by definition its an unreasonable test.
That's not entirely true. Especially since it's not a random test "by definition," it's a random test "by regulation". Your excellent dissection of the definition of "random", in breaking out "reason" to highlight, failed to also break out "pattern" and "definite aim", both of which can and often do apply to "random". A random drug test without reason would be, by definition, unreasonable, but a random drug test without a pattern doesn't necessarily equate to unreasonable. You also failed to realize that a random drug test most definitely has a reason, not the least of which is deterrence, which doesn't apply to your posted definition of "unreasonable".
Also, you fail to take into consideration that "random drug test" is an entity unto itself (a collective noun) and has its own definition that may or may not be different from separate definitions of the individual nouns within the collective.
US law defines "random drug testing" as “the unscheduled, unannounced urine drug testing of randomly selected individuals in testing designated positions, by a process designed to ensure that selections are made in a non-discriminatory manner.”
Fact is, testing everybody at pre-determined intervals would be unreasonable in most situations.
The drug-testing movement began in 1986, when former President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12564, requiring all federal employees to refrain from using illegal drugs, on or off-duty, as a condition of federal employment. Two years later, Congress passed the Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988. That, in turn, spawned the creation of federal Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs (Section 503 of PUBLIC LAW 100-71). The mandatory guidelines apply to executive agencies of the federal government, the uniformed services (excepting certain members of the armed forces), and contractors or service providers under contract with the federal government (excepting the postal service and employing units in the judicial and legislative branches).
Although the Act only applies to federal employees, many state and local governments followed suit and adopted similar programs under state laws and drug-free workplace programs.
Constitutional Protections
The U.S. Constitution does not prohibit drug testing of employees. However, in the U.S. Supreme Court case of Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656 (1989), the high court ruled that requiring employees to produce urine samples constituted a "search" within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, all such testing must meet the "reasonableness" requirement of the Fourth Amendment (which protects citizens against "unreasonable" searches and seizures). The Court also ruled that positive test results could not be used in subsequent criminal prosecutions without the employee's consent.
The other major constitutional issue in employee drug testing involves the Fifth Amendment (made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment), which prohibits denial of life, liberty, or property without "due process of law." Since the majority of private-sector employees in the United States (excepting mostly union employees) are considered "at-will employees," an employer need not articulate a reason for termination of employment. However, under certain circumstances, the denial of employment or the denial of continued employment based on drug test results may invoke "due process" considerations, such as the validity of the test results, the employee's right to respond, or any required notice to an employee.
Finally, under the same constitutional provisions, persons have a fundamental right to privacy of their person and property. Drug testing, although in itself deemed legal, may be subject to constitutional challenge if testing results are indiscriminately divulged, if procedures for obtaining personal specimens do not respect the privacy rights of the person, or if testing is unnecessarily or excessively imposed.
The salient part of all this is the simple fact that under federal law, jobs that involve safety or security functions generally require mandatory drug testing of applicants or employees. The U.S. Department of Transportation adopted revised regulations in August 2001, and other agencies are free to adopt their own internal regulations. Likewise, many states expressly mandate drug testing for similar jobs, for example, jobs in the medical and health related fields, security positions, food handling jobs, physically demanding jobs such as utilities cable line installation or climbing, and last but certainly not least, jobs requiring the use of machinery or vehicles.
So using whatever definitions float your boat, federal law and numerous rulings say yer wrong. The landmark case was Shoemaker v. Handel (795 F. 2d 1136 [3rd Cir. 986], where U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals decided that, "warrantless searches or seizures by voluntary participants in [a] highly state regulated...industry are reasonable". Many lower courts began ruling along the same precedent, but the big one was Custom Service employees (National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) v. Von Raab, 108 S. Ct. 1072, 1988) where the Supreme Court concluded that the testing was reasonable because of the administrative search exception to the Fourth Amendment, and affirmed the state's interest in a drug-free workplace and the protection of "truly sensitive information" over the individual interests of its employees. Suddenly, what had once been the "exception" became the rule. Individual privacy, a right once thought to be guaranteed by the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution, was no longer seen as legitimate when balanced against the state interest to win the "War on Drugs."
Furthermore, no longer did the courts require individualized suspicion to uphold drug testing. In fact, the Von Raab ruling demonstrated that urinalysis may now be upheld even when there is no suspicion of drug use at all.
As one law scholar wrote, this approach to justice would be equal to eliminating the need for probable cause standards to search homes because there exists a strong state interest in eliminating crime. America's national concern to combat illicit drug use has wreaked havoc upon the rights delineated in our Constitution, true enough. Unfortunately, as the national zeal toward eliminating drugs in society began to grow exponentially, so did courts' willingness to find more and more "exceptions" to the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. But for trucking, you still gotta pee in a cup, and it's not unreasonable that you do so, according to the state and the will of the people's zeal to rid the highways of big, scary vehicles driven by impaired drivers.
