In re Grievance of Spinos

**Employee Drug Test Case: City Worker Loses Appeal After Positive Test** This case involved a City of Richmond employee named Spinos who was fired after failing a drug test. Spinos claimed he unknowingly ingested drugs and appealed his termination to the city's Personnel Board. The Personnel Board sided with him and ordered his reinstatement, essentially creating an exception to the city's drug policy for cases where employees didn't know they had taken drugs. However, the court overturned the Personnel Board's decision. The court ruled that the board overstepped its authority by basically rewriting the city's substance abuse policy to add an exception that wasn't actually written in the original policy. The court said the board couldn't just create new policy exceptions on its own - it could only interpret the existing written policy as it was. **What this means for workers:** This ruling shows that workplace drug policies will typically be enforced exactly as written, without exceptions for "unknowing" drug use. Workers should understand that even if they didn't intentionally take drugs, a positive test can still result in termination if that's what the policy states. Appeals boards cannot create new exceptions that aren't already in the written policy.