[10/3/97] - The Federal courts have begun to rule that employers have the right to prohibit you from smoking, or even taking certain prescription drugs, even outside the workplace. This means they can tell you what to do while you're at home-- even over-ride the advice of your healthcare provider.

The rulings specify that employers DO NOT have the right to do this to you unless and only if your state had passed a law denying them the "right" to own you 24 hours a day-- presumably because paying you anything at all entitles them to this.

Where the &*#% did these judges find such rights grants to employers in the U.S. Constitution? Is this some kind of new common-law precedent? I surely hope NOT, and I'm equally sure there are no such words or articles in the Constitution or any of its amendments.

Interestingly enough, the Supreme Court recently ruled that elected officials and judges are Consitutionally exempt from drung testing. (No, I'm NOT making this up!). Now that's interesting. A friend of mine recently applied for a new job selling furniture, and her new (prospective) employer will require a drug test of her. I can understand such a test for those of us who operate heavy machinery, especially on pubic highways or in the air or sea, but I have yet to see any commercial drivers speeding down the interstate on a footstool.

I presume the logic our esteemed and most honored legal minds have applied in this case-- to protect us against reckless operation or sale of furniture-- is based on the same notion that allows employers to tell us what to do at home: if they pay you they must own you.

We can only assume that elected officials and judges are not paid, or that they are now, in U.S. Constitutional law, claiming some kind of "divine right".

Or maybe they're just all on drugs.

Actually, I'm being a little hard on them, though they seem to have no trouble upholding court decisions against employees and other "servants". To get your own slant on the complexities of this issue, read the actual opinions of the Justices at Cornell's Legal Information Institute/Project Hermes: Supreme Court of the United States; Dec.# 96-126:

Justice Ginsburg's concurring opinion

Justice Rehnquist's dissenting opinion

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