Originally Posted by
sirdatary
Most states condition the issuance of a driver license on your consent to submit to a blood test. This, to me, is reasonable (as compared to the "consent" at the checkpoint). The extent of the search is very clear at the time of consent, the search is tailored to the purpose it serves, and the search is effective in improving the safety of the travelling public. All three of these points are doubtful when applied to TSA searches.
As far as "forcing" a blood draw... That does seem kind of silly. Why not just make refusing a blood draw a crime that carries the same punishment as a DWI? The only time I could see a forced blood draw as neccesary is in the case of a more serious crime resulting from the DWI (vehicular manslaughter, etc).
I'm not sure about consenting to the blood test, but you do consent to the breathalyzer when you get your driver's license, hence the automatic suspension if you refuse.
That said, the ACLU indeed makes the argument that the blood test is unnecessary if the goal is actually to "get drunk drivers off the road" as it's often justified. If they're at a point where the breathalyzer has been refused, the driver is
already going to be off the road, by virtue of the process described in the paragraph above.
What's really happening is that politicians and prosecutors want to point to
convictions and they're not as assured of getting one if the drunk guy sleeps it off in the jail and there's no actual objective evidence of intoxication from either the breathalyzer or blood test. Funnily enough, I don't blame the executive branch for this - they're just doing the job they've been elected to do. However, the limit to this behavior is supposed to be the judicial branch, which is no longer the case.
Again, this doesn't really have anything to do with the TSA except for what I see as an overall erosion of constitutional rights in our society in the name of "public safety".