Judge rules case of trooper fired over failed drug sample can go forward
Former New York State Trooper Jamie Kasper alleges she was wrongly terminated from her job after testing positive for amphetamine. A second test, including a hair sample, was negative and her attorney said the first test should have been discarded. Kasper had asked the New York Inspector General's Office to investigate her case, but the office did not pursue it. She has since filed a lawsuit seeking reinstatement.
The case will now move to the appellate division in Albany for review.
The lawsuit centers on Kasper’s attorneys allegations that State Police relied on an unauthorized urine test that may have returned a false positive due to her use of over-the-counter dietary supplements.
An expert witness hired by her attorneys testified during an arbitration proceeding that the test lacked the specificity to distinguish “amphetamine from structurally similar isomers found in many unregulated supplements,” and that the supplements are a well-known cause of false-positive drug tests.
“Women in law enforcement face an uphill battle to succeed and advance in what has for far too long been a male-dominated profession,” Kasper, a U.S. Army veteran, told the Times Union earlier this year. “For nearly two decades, I worked hard to demonstrate my ability to do the job, and more than performed the duties expected of me. All I’m asking for is fair, equal treatment and to be able to return to the work that I love — protecting and serving the people of New York.”
Kasper’s attorneys filed a formal complaint asking the state inspector general’s office to investigate the handling of her case, but the office declined to do so. That complaint had accused the State Police of applying different standards in the case because Kasper is a woman.
That complaint also accused State Police hierarchy of targeting her for a random drug screening last year as retribution for a lawsuit that her husband — also a former trooper — had filed against the agency weeks earlier in an effort to have his law enforcement certification credentials reinstated. The court petition filed by Kasper’s attorneys focuses on the allegedly flawed arbitration and drug testing processes, and does not invoke arguments about her husband’s case or gender bias.
Charles W. Murphy, president of the New York State Troopers PBA, had previously alleged that “State Police leaders manipulated due process and disregarded their own internal policies to take vindictive and targeted actions against a veteran, mother, and dedicated public servant.”
Following Monday’s ruling by Lynch, Murphy said: “We are gratified by the judge’s decision that allows Trooper Kasper to have her day in court and continue to believe that the facts in this case merit her immediate reinstatement.”
Kasper is a former National Guard member who was deployed to Iraq in 2003 and 2004 as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom — and later became a state correction officer. She was sworn in as a trooper in October 2016.
Kasper, in an interview in April, had said that she had a “spotless record” as a trooper assigned to Troop F in the Hudson Valley before the agency conducted a random drug test on her at a Kingston barracks in January 2024.
She and her attorney had said the sample was then tested in a procedure that violated the agency’s policies and that State Police also later improperly sought access to her personal medical records as part of an alleged vendetta to punish her for her husband’s litigation. Her husband, Christopher Collins, joined the State Police at the same time as Kasper. He resigned in October 2022 after he had been investigated for a drug test that showed results for amphetamine, which he attributed to a prescription for Adderall, which treats attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and THC — which he had attributed to an over-the-counter CBD gummy he had ingested.
Collins, who later became a police officer in Saugerties, had sued the State Police after they sought to have his police officer certification revoked by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. That decision was later reversed as a result of the lawsuit he filed in January 2024 — a few weeks before State Police randomly drug tested his wife.
“I’ve never had a drug test come into question in my entire job-related history,” Kasper said six months ago. “The system … it’s broken. It needs to be fixed. I’m just hoping that through this, it’ll shed some light, or maybe (lead to) some changes.”
The complaint filed with the inspector general’s office had also raised questions about whether State Police can manipulate the “randomization” of drug tests to be able to test specific troopers.
The amphetamine result could have been a “false-positive” due to her taking workout and dietary supplements, including energy drinks and other over-the-counter products she had consumed as part of her training regimen as a former amateur fitness competitor.
Her attorneys also cited an earlier case in which a male senior investigator who tested positive for a banned substance faced no discipline after telling the agency that he may have tested positive for antidepressants because he had been taking a weight-loss supplement.
During an arbitration proceeding, an attorney for the state had assured Kasper and her attorney that they would not retest the sample that had been positive, and acknowledged that the procedure used to test that sample was unauthorized. But during an arbitration proceeding, they said, the state’s attorneys “secretly” had a second sample retested using another procedure — that came back positive — after agreeing they would not do that.
That decision “deprived (her) of the opportunity to prepare and present a meaningful defense,” the court petition states, adding that the State Police “changed its own rules mid-hearing by introducing new evidence procured through procedures forbidden by its own regulations.”
According to Lynch’s decision, Kasper alleged “that the introduction of the (second test) result violated her due process rights, as this positive test was not referenced in the disciplinary charges filed against her, and she was led to believe such a test would not be performed or admitted into evidence.”
Kasper and her attorney, John M. Tuppen of Albany, also noted that there was no evidence or testimony of her being a drug user or knowingly ingesting amphetamines and that a second test, including a hair sample test, refuted the results of the first test, which they said was performed in violation of the agency’s policies.
Beau Duffy, a spokesman for the State Police, disputed that the random drug test was staged to target Kasper or that her termination was not warranted.
“Jamie Kasper tested positive for a controlled substance during a random drug test and was terminated after an administrative investigation that followed all the appropriate procedures for investigating and adjudicating misconduct,” Duffy said in April. “The fact that her husband separated from the New York State Police and challenged his decertification had no bearing on her selection for drug testing, which is randomly determined, or the handling of her investigation.”
1 comment:
Drug tests are far from perfect. I would be very hesitant to fire somebody from their job on the basis of one dubious test.
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