$780,000 More for Hair Testing: NYPD Keeps Paying for a Testing Regime the Federal Government Still Has Not Standardized

After decades of litigation, scientific challenges, a $2.6 million Boston settlement, and Boston’s own attempt to shift liability back to Psychemedics, NYPD is extending its relationship with the same laboratory even though there remains no finalized federal workplace standard governing hair drug testing.

New York City is preparing to spend as much as another $780,000 for hair analysis, drug testing, and expert witness services for the NYPD, and the information is sitting in plain sight in the New York City Record. On March 20, 2026, the City published a “Public Comment on Contract Awards” notice identifying Psychemedics Corporation as the contractor, setting a maximum value of $780,000, and describing the scope as “hair analysis, drug testing services and expert witness services for NYPD mission-critical systems.” The stated term runs from April 27, 2025 through April 26, 2027, and the procurement is being handled as a Negotiated Acquisition Extension under Procurement Policy Board Rule § 3-04(b), E-PIN 05625N0002. An earlier October 7, 2025 notice was even more direct, stating that NYPD intended to extend its existing Psychemedics contract for “Drug Screening, Hair Analysis and Expert Witness Services” because NYPD considered those services necessary to hire and maintain its workforce.

Readers can verify this themselves by going to the New York City Record Online and searching either “Hair analysis and drug testing services” or E-PIN 05625N0002. The contract language matters because NYPD is not merely paying Psychemedics to perform laboratory testing. The City is also purchasing expert witness services from the same contractor whose testing may become the basis for discipline, termination, or other career-altering employment action. That means taxpayers fund the test at the front end and may then fund the same vendor to defend the methodology and interpretation when the employee challenges the result. That arrangement does not, standing alone, establish scientific unreliability or bias, but it plainly makes the laboratory’s financial relationship with the City, repeat-player status, validation materials, prior testimony, and litigation compensation legitimate subjects of scrutiny.

Hair Is Conspicuously Missing From the Federal Testing Framework

The regulatory problem is more substantial than the absence of final federal workplace guidelines. The Food and Drug Administration’s own clinical-toxicology regulations identify the biological matrices in which regulated drug-test systems are intended to measure particular drugs, and hair is conspicuously absent from those substantive testing regulations. Under 21 C.F.R. § 862.3250, for example, a cocaine and cocaine-metabolite test system is defined as a device intended to measure cocaine and benzoylecgonine in “serum, plasma, and urine.” The regulation governing cannabinoid test systems identifies “serum, plasma, saliva, and urine.” 21 C.F.R. § 862.3870. The regulation governing opiate test systems identifies “blood, serum, urine, gastric contents, and saliva.” 21 C.F.R. § 862.3650. FDA’s clinical-toxicology framework therefore expressly recognizes conventional biological matrices for substantive drug testing while providing no corresponding Part 862 test-system regulation establishing hair as a matrix for measuring cocaine, opiates, cannabinoids, or the other drugs routinely implicated in workplace testing.

Hair does appear elsewhere in FDA regulations, but in an entirely different capacity. Under 21 C.F.R. § 864.3260, FDA recognizes over-the-counter specimen-collection systems capable of collecting biological materials including “hair, urine, sweat, or saliva” so that the specimen can later be sent to a laboratory for analysis. That regulation governs the collection, preservation, and transportation of specimens. It does not establish a clinical-toxicology hair drug-test system, does not specify scientifically validated hair concentration thresholds for cocaine or other drugs, and does not establish that a particular concentration found in hair reliably proves intentional ingestion, frequency of use, dose, timing, or impairment. The distinction between FDA recognizing a container or collection system capable of collecting hair and FDA regulating a substantive drug-testing system that measures drugs in hair is fundamental.

The same regulatory gap appears in the federal workplace-testing program. The United States Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (“SAMHSA”), has adopted final Mandatory Guidelines for federal workplace drug testing using urine and oral fluid. Hair remains different. HHS proposed Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing Programs Using Hair in September 2020, but those proposed guidelines have never become final. Indeed, the federal government’s own 2023 Mandatory Guidelines expressly noted that no federal agencies were then testing hair specimens and separately identified the 2020 hair guidelines as merely proposed.

This distinction becomes particularly important because the New York City Police Department (“NYPD”) is not collecting hair for a consumer screening product. It is using laboratory hair-test results to make employment and disciplinary decisions capable of ending police careers. Yet there is no FDA Part 862 drug-test-system regulation establishing hair as the biological matrix for these substantive tests, no final HHS Mandatory Guidelines governing hair testing in the federal workplace, and no federal standard establishing what a measured drug concentration in hair may reliably prove about intentional ingestion or use.

FDA also expressly states that it does not review drugs-of-abuse tests intended solely for employment and insurance testing when the applicable labeling conditions are satisfied and the devices are not intended for federal drug-testing programs. Thus, the mere fact that a private laboratory can market or perform employment drug testing cannot legitimately be transformed into an assertion that FDA has reviewed and validated the underlying hair-testing methodology for the disciplinary conclusions NYPD draws from it.

That is the regulatory problem NYPD should be required to answer. FDA’s substantive clinical-toxicology regulations identify urine, blood or its components, saliva, and in certain contexts other conventional biological specimens as matrices for regulated drug-test systems. Hair appears in FDA regulations as a specimen that can be collected and transported, but not as a corresponding Part 862 clinical-toxicology matrix for the drug-test systems NYPD relies upon. HHS has considered federal workplace hair testing for years and still has not finalized the proposed guidelines. Nevertheless, NYPD continues to treat hair testing as sufficiently established to support serious disciplinary and employment consequences.

The absence of a finalized federal hair-testing standard does not automatically render every laboratory result inadmissible. But neither can the City fairly characterize this methodology as though the federal government has fully standardized or validated it for workplace use. The federal regulatory record says otherwise.

Boston Is the Warning New York Should Have Already Read

The best evidence that these questions are not theoretical comes from Boston, where the use of Psychemedics hair testing generated nearly two decades of administrative, state-court, and federal civil-rights litigation before the City eventually abandoned the testing program and paid millions of dollars to resolve the resulting discrimination claims. The significance of that history is not found in any single decision. It is found in the accumulation of decisions in which different courts, applying different legal standards, repeatedly confronted the same underlying problem: a positive hair result could not simply be equated with reliable proof that a particular officer intentionally ingested cocaine.

Boston began using Psychemedics hair testing for police officers and recruits in the late 1990s. Between 2001 and 2006, ten Boston police officers were terminated after their hair tested positive for cocaine. Those officers challenged their terminations before the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission, producing one of the most extensive public administrative records examining the use of hair analysis as employment evidence. The consolidated proceedings consumed eighteen days of hearings and included hundreds of exhibits and competing expert testimony concerning environmental contamination, the laboratory washing process, cutoff concentrations, hair pigmentation, racial differences in hair characteristics, analytical methodology, and the reliability of using a positive result as proof of ingestion. The proceedings were delayed in part because Psychemedics asserted proprietary interests in portions of its methodology and resisted producing materials that the officers contended were necessary to evaluate the testing process. Matter of Boston Police Department Drug Testing Appeals, 26 Mass. Civ. Serv. Rep. 73 (2013).

The Commission’s 2013 determination was considerably more nuanced than a declaration that hair testing was either entirely reliable or entirely worthless. It concluded that the testing methodology had a legitimate role in identifying officers who might reasonably be suspected of illicit drug use, but that a reported positive result was not necessarily conclusive proof of ingestion and could not automatically establish just cause for termination. Applying that principle officer by officer, the Commission upheld the terminations of Preston Thompson, Rudy Guity, Oscar Bridgeman, and William Bridgeforth, but reversed the terminations of Richard Beckers, Ronnie Jones, Jacqueline McGowan, Shawn Harris, Walter Washington, and George Downing. Those six officers were ordered reinstated with back pay and benefits.

Boston challenged that result, and the officers challenged other portions of it. The Massachusetts Superior Court affirmed the Commission’s essential conclusions in 2014 and expanded the back-pay remedy so that the six reinstated officers were entitled to compensation dating to their respective terminations rather than merely to the commencement of the Commission hearings. The Massachusetts Appeals Court then affirmed in Thompson v. Civil Service Commission, 90 Mass. App. Ct. 462, 59 N.E.3d 1185 (2016). The Appeals Court specifically sustained the Commission’s approach of examining the entire evidentiary record rather than treating a Psychemedics positive result as dispositive proof of drug use. It also upheld the determination that the six officers had been terminated without just cause while affirming the four terminations supported by additional evidence.

The litigation did not end when those officers won reinstatement. Boston’s implementation of the reinstatement and back-pay orders produced additional proceedings over compensation, overtime, detail pay, mitigation, interest, and other economic consequences flowing from the wrongful separations. In Boston Police Department v. Jones, 98 Mass. App. Ct. 762, 159 N.E.3d 645 (2020), the Massachusetts Appeals Court confronted those remedial issues after several of the reinstated officers returned to duty and others retired or declined reinstatement. The case demonstrates that the economic consequences of an unreliable or inadequately supported employment decision did not end with an administrative reversal; the dispute continued years later over how fully the affected officers had to be made whole.

A separate line of Massachusetts litigation reinforced the reliability problem in the hiring context. Michael Gannon had been bypassed for appointment to the Boston Police Department because a 2010 Psychemedics hair sample tested positive for cocaine. Gannon denied ever using cocaine. The Civil Service Commission credited his testimony and concluded that, given the documented concerns surrounding hair-testing reliability, Boston had failed to establish reasonable justification for bypassing him. A Superior Court judge reversed, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reinstated the Commission’s decision in Boston Police Department v. Civil Service Commission, 483 Mass. 461, 133 N.E.3d 322 (2019). The Court emphasized that the Commission was entitled to consider both the scientific limitations of the testing methodology and Gannon’s individual evidence rather than treat the laboratory result as conclusive.

At the same time, Boston was fighting a much larger federal civil-rights case brought by Black officers and applicants affected by the same testing program. That case, Jones v. City of Boston, was not resolved in a single appellate decision either. It went to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit twice.

In the first appeal, Jones v. City of Boston, 752 F.3d 38 (1st Cir. 2014) (“Jones I”), the First Circuit reversed summary judgment for Boston on the Title VII disparate-impact claim. The plaintiffs had presented eight years of testing data showing that Black officers and cadets tested positive for cocaine approximately 1.3% of the time while White officers and cadets tested positive at a rate just under 0.3%. Although the absolute number of positives was small, the racial disparity was statistically significant. The First Circuit held that the Black plaintiffs had established a prima facie disparate-impact case as a matter of law and remanded for consideration of whether the testing program was job related and consistent with business necessity and, if so, whether Boston had refused an available alternative that would have served its legitimate interests with less racial impact.

On remand, the federal district court again entered summary judgment for Boston. In Jones v. City of Boston, 118 F. Supp. 3d 425 (D. Mass. 2015) (“Jones II”), the court accepted Boston’s business-necessity defense and rejected the plaintiffs’ proposed alternatives, including urinalysis and combined hair-and-urine testing. The district court concluded that the plaintiffs had not produced sufficient evidence from which a factfinder could determine that Boston had refused an equally valid, less discriminatory alternative.

The First Circuit reversed Boston again in material part. In Jones v. City of Boston, 845 F.3d 28 (1st Cir. 2016) (“Jones III”), the court agreed that maintaining a drug-free police force was plainly job related and that hair testing furthered a legitimate business need. But that did not end the Title VII inquiry. The court held that a reasonable factfinder could conclude that Boston had refused a less discriminatory alternative: continuing to use hair testing as an initial screening mechanism but requiring positive employees to undergo a series of random urinalysis tests before termination or suspension. The evidence could support a finding that this approach would have preserved the principal screening benefit Boston claimed for hair testing while reducing the risk that an employee would lose a career because of a false-positive hair result. The First Circuit therefore sent the case back for trial on whether Boston had refused that less discriminatory alternative after it had been specifically brought to the Department’s attention.

That distinction is particularly important. The First Circuit did not hold that Boston could never use hair testing or that every positive result was scientifically false. It held something more consequential for employment law: even where a testing practice serves a legitimate business purpose, Title VII can still prohibit the employer from continuing to use that practice when an available alternative could meet the same legitimate need while producing less racial disparity. That is precisely the type of analysis that should matter when a public employer continues using the same technology after being presented with evidence of differential impact and alternative procedures.

After the second First Circuit remand, the case proceeded to a six-day bench trial before United States District Judge Douglas P. Woodlock in 2018. By the time the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court later addressed the contractual dispute between Boston and Psychemedics, the federal court had not yet issued a final merits determination following that trial. The parties ultimately entered mediation instead.

Meanwhile, Boston’s dispute with Psychemedics had developed into litigation of its own. Boston’s contracts with Psychemedics contained an indemnification provision requiring Psychemedics, under specified circumstances, to assume Boston’s defense and hold the City harmless from claims arising from wrongful or negligent acts by the company. Boston raised indemnification concerns as early as 2006 and later attempted to bring Psychemedics into the federal litigation. In 2017, Boston renewed its demand for indemnification, including litigation expenses and anticipated settlement exposure. Psychemedics responded by filing a declaratory-judgment action seeking a ruling that it did not owe Boston a defense or indemnification. Boston counterclaimed for breach of contract and declaratory relief.

The Massachusetts Superior Court initially granted summary judgment to Psychemedics, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed in Psychemedics Corp. v. City of Boston, 486 Mass. 724, 161 N.E.3d 399 (2021). The Court held that disputed factual questions concerning Boston’s communications with Psychemedics, the company’s opportunity to assume the defense, and the parties’ course of dealing prevented Psychemedics from obtaining judgment as a matter of law. Boston’s indemnification and breach-of-contract counterclaims therefore survived. Importantly, the Court did not hold that Psychemedics ultimately owed indemnification; it held that the company had not established entitlement to judgment eliminating Boston’s claims.

That indemnification litigation adds an extraordinary dimension to the history. Boston was publicly defending its continued reliance on Psychemedics testing while simultaneously asserting that Psychemedics might have contractual responsibility for some of the costs and liability generated by litigation attacking that very testing program. That is not proof that the underlying tests were invalid, but it demonstrates how far the institutional consequences of the program had traveled beyond a routine employment-testing dispute.

By 2021, Boston finally stopped using the hair-testing program. Two years later, the federal Jones litigation ended with a $2.6 million settlement paid to three Black officers and a Black cadet who had been terminated or disciplined following hair-test results. Lawyers for Civil Rights, which represented the plaintiffs, reported that the settlement followed the two First Circuit decisions, the six-day federal trial, and subsequent mediation. The organization also emphasized the longstanding scientific concern that hair analysis could not reliably distinguish drug ingestion from external contamination and that characteristics associated with Black hair and commonly used grooming products could increase the risk of contamination and false-positive results.

Seen in full, Boston’s experience was not one unfavorable case and then a settlement. The Civil Service Commission conducted an exhaustive evidentiary examination and reversed six terminations. The Massachusetts Superior Court and Appeals Court sustained those reinstatements and expanded the back-pay remedy. Subsequent appellate litigation continued over the financial consequences of the wrongful separations. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court separately sustained a hiring candidate’s challenge to Boston’s reliance on a Psychemedics positive result. The First Circuit twice revived the Black officers’ Title VII disparate-impact litigation, first establishing disparate impact and then permitting the case to proceed on Boston’s alleged refusal to adopt a less discriminatory alternative. The case went through a six-day federal trial. Boston separately pursued Psychemedics for indemnification. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court revived those contractual claims. Boston ultimately stopped hair testing altogether and paid $2.6 million to settle the federal discrimination case.

That is the history New York City has in front of it while NYPD prepares to spend another $780,000 on Psychemedics hair analysis, drug testing, and expert witness services. Boston did not arrive at its final position because one employee disputed one laboratory result. It arrived there after years of scientific testimony, administrative findings, state appellate decisions, two federal appellate reversals, remedial litigation, indemnification litigation, a federal trial, and ultimately settlement. New York cannot reasonably treat that history as though it never happened.

NYPD Is Proceeding Anyway

Against the full Boston history, NYPD’s decision to continue purchasing Psychemedics hair-testing services requires more than a generalized assertion that hair analysis is an accepted forensic technique. Boston already traveled that road. Its police department relied on the methodology for years, defended it through extensive administrative proceedings and multiple layers of appellate litigation, confronted a statistically significant racial disparate impact under Title VII, litigated whether less discriminatory alternatives were available, pursued contractual indemnification from Psychemedics for litigation-related exposure, ultimately discontinued the testing program, and paid $2.6 million to resolve the federal civil-rights litigation. The lesson from Boston is therefore not that hair analysis is incapable of detecting drug-related compounds. The lesson is that detection does not resolve the much harder question of what a positive hair result can reliably prove about human conduct.

That distinction remains unresolved in the scientific literature. Hair is capable of retaining drugs and drug metabolites over a substantially longer period than blood or urine, which makes it attractive as a forensic matrix when the question is whether exposure occurred at some point during an extended period. But the interpretive limitations are substantial because a measured concentration does not arise from drug intake alone. Drugs and metabolites may reach or remain in hair through bloodstream incorporation, sweat, sebum, environmental deposition, external contamination, and other mechanisms, while the resulting concentration can also be affected by melanin content, cosmetic treatment, washing procedures, hair growth, anatomical sampling location, analytical methodology, and individual physiological variation. A 2025 review by Jacqueline A. Hubbard, “Review on Toxicology Testing in Hair,” published in The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine, 10 J. Applied Lab. Med. 983 (2025), emphasized that drug incorporation into hair is complex and that decontamination procedures, extraction techniques, melanin content, variable hair-growth rates, external drug particulates, and cosmetic treatment can materially affect the interpretation of toxicological results. The review further explained that drugs may enter hair not only through diffusion from the bloodstream, but also through sweat, sebum, and external contamination, making the pathway by which an analyte entered the hair a central interpretive question rather than a matter resolved merely by detecting the substance.

Those concerns are not confined to critics of hair testing. In Donata Favretto et al., “The Society of Hair Testing Consensus on General Recommendations for Hair Testing and Drugs of Abuse Testing in Hair,” 15 Drug Testing & Analysis 1042 (2023), the Society of Hair Testing set out detailed consensus recommendations addressing specimen collection, sample continuity, storage, segmentation, washing, pre-analytical preparation, analytical techniques, quality control, and interpretation. The breadth of those recommendations is itself significant because it reflects the underlying reality that identifying an analyte in hair is only the beginning of the forensic inquiry. The evidentiary meaning of the result depends upon how the specimen was collected, preserved, washed, prepared, analyzed, and interpreted, as well as whether alternative pathways for the presence of the analyte have been adequately considered. The Society’s own consensus framework therefore reinforces the distinction between analytical detection and the much broader conclusion that a particular result proves intentional drug ingestion or any specific pattern of use.

The National Institute of Justice addressed the same unresolved problem in its June 2024 publication, “Detecting Drugs in Hair: Is It Drug Use or Environmental Contamination?,” NCJ No. 309097, which summarizes NIJ-funded research by Megan Grabenauer and Katherine Bollinger examining whether phase II drug metabolites can provide a more reliable means of distinguishing actual drug use from environmental contamination. NIJ described the distinction as a longstanding problem in toxicology because drugs may enter hair through the bloodstream, sweat, or direct contact with the external environment. The publication also noted that laboratories ordinarily rely on washing procedures to remove external contamination before analysis, but that those decontamination procedures are not standardized and can themselves create interpretive complications because moisture may permit substances on the hair surface to migrate into the hair shaft. The underlying research therefore sought an alternative approach based on metabolites produced by the body rather than continued reliance on decontamination alone.

That research is particularly important to the employment-testing debate because it confirms that the scientific community is still developing methods capable of distinguishing ingestion from environmental exposure. NIJ reported that the researchers developed methods for detecting conjugated phase II metabolites of opioids, cocaine, and amphetamines and characterized the approach as potentially capable of reducing concerns over external contamination and interpretation of hair-test results. But the work also remained subject to significant limitations, including a small number of hair samples from persons with known drug use and limited availability of reference standards. The existence of continuing federally funded research directed specifically at solving the ingestion-versus-contamination problem materially undercuts any assumption that a commercial laboratory’s existing washing procedure has already rendered that question scientifically settled.

The most recent academic review makes the limitation even more explicit. In Daniel Preece and Abigail Jones, The Forensic Limits of Hair Drug Testing: A Critical Assessment of Drug Intake and Hair Concentration Relationships, 66 Science & Justice 101444 (2026), the authors systematically examined controlled studies addressing whether drug intake can be reliably correlated with drug concentrations measured in hair. They found substantial variability across drug classes, overlapping concentration ranges between low- and high-dose subjects, and significant confounding from melanin, sweat contamination, cosmetic treatment, and methodological differences. Their conclusion is directly relevant to employment testing: hair analysis can establish exposure, but current evidence does not permit reliable quantification of dose or reliable distinction between intentional ingestion and passive contact. They therefore characterize hair as a qualitative indicator of exposure rather than a quantitative measure of drug intake.

That conclusion goes directly to the question Boston spent years litigating. A laboratory may be able to establish that cocaine, methamphetamine, or another drug-related compound is present in hair. That does not necessarily establish how the compound entered the hair, when it entered the hair, how frequently the person consumed the drug, what quantity was consumed, whether a particular concentration corresponds to a particular dose, or whether the individual was impaired at any relevant time. Each is a separate inferential proposition, and each requires a scientific foundation independent of the mere analytical detection of an analyte.

The distinction between detection and interpretation is particularly important because employment discipline often depends upon the latter rather than the former. An employer generally is not disciplining an employee because a laboratory instrument detected a molecule. The disciplinary conclusion is that the employee intentionally used an illicit drug in violation of an employment rule. To move from the first proposition to the second, the methodology must reliably distinguish deliberate ingestion from external contamination or other sources of exposure. If an employer goes further and contends that concentration demonstrates repeated use, heavy use, a particular pattern of consumption, or approximate dose, the scientific burden becomes greater still.

The 2026 review is particularly damaging to attempts to make those additional inferences because it found no dependable dose-concentration relationship across the illicit drugs examined. Even where controlled studies showed general trends, the concentration ranges overlapped substantially, and individual variability prevented reliable retrospective estimation of consumption. The review also identified melanin as an important confounding variable, noting that numerous studies have reported greater incorporation of certain drugs into darker hair because of their affinity for eumelanin. The authors cautioned that pigmentation therefore must be considered when quantitative comparisons are made.

That issue cannot be separated from Boston’s Title VII experience. The First Circuit did not hold that pigmentation alone caused the statistical disparity experienced by Black officers, nor did it invalidate every hair test on racial grounds. But the litigation demonstrated that a facially neutral testing program can produce a statistically significant racial disparity, and the continuing scientific literature shows why pigmentation and other biological characteristics remain legitimate subjects of forensic inquiry. The proper response is not to convert either proposition into a simplistic conclusion. It is to require the employer and laboratory to demonstrate that the methodology and its interpretation account adequately for the variables the scientific literature continues to identify.

The same principle applies to environmental contamination. A commercial laboratory may maintain that its washing procedures adequately remove external drug contamination, but that assertion is itself a scientific proposition requiring validation. The contemporary literature continues to discuss washing and decontamination because there is no universal procedure that eliminates every interpretive problem across every drug, specimen, exposure scenario, and hair type. The scientific question therefore is not simply whether the laboratory washes the specimen, but whether the specific procedure used has been independently validated to distinguish external contamination from incorporated drug under the conditions relevant to the individual case.

The current literature likewise counsels against treating methodological sophistication as proof of interpretive certainty. Modern analytical techniques can identify drugs and metabolites at extremely low concentrations with impressive sensitivity. A 2026 systematic review examining 113 studies published between 2010 and 2025 documented the increasing analytical sophistication of hair testing, particularly through liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry and other highly sensitive techniques. But improved analytical detection does not necessarily eliminate the biological and interpretive limitations governing how the detected substance entered the hair or what the resulting concentration means. A test can become increasingly precise in measuring an analyte while the inference drawn from that measurement remains scientifically uncertain.

That is the point NYPD should be required to reconcile before spending another $780,000. Boston’s experience demonstrated the legal consequences of treating a positive hair result as more definitive than the evidence allowed. The contemporary scientific literature, including work published after Boston abandoned the testing program, continues to identify many of the same underlying interpretive problems that drove that litigation. The questions involving contamination, pigmentation, drug incorporation, decontamination, dose-concentration relationships, and the distinction between exposure and intentional ingestion did not disappear when the Boston cases settled. They remain active subjects of scientific investigation.

Accordingly, the relevant question is not whether Psychemedics can detect cocaine, methamphetamine, or other analytes in a hair specimen. Modern laboratories plainly can. The relevant question is what NYPD is entitled to infer from that detection and whether those inferences are supported by independently reproducible science rather than by the vendor’s own interpretation of its testing methodology.

If the Department contends that a positive result proves intentional ingestion, it should identify the scientific evidence demonstrating that the methodology reliably excludes external contamination and other routes of incorporation. If it contends that concentration proves repeated or heavy use, it should identify the validated dose-concentration relationship supporting that conclusion. If it relies upon washing procedures to distinguish contamination from ingestion, it should produce the independent validation demonstrating the limits and reliability of those procedures. If pigmentation does not materially affect interpretation under its methodology, it should produce the evidence supporting that proposition. None of those questions can be answered simply by pointing to the laboratory’s ability to identify an analyte.

That is what makes continued reliance on the testing regime so difficult to reconcile with what happened in Boston. Boston did not abandon hair testing because laboratories suddenly became incapable of detecting drugs in hair. It abandoned the program after years of litigation revealed that the evidentiary meaning assigned to those results was far more complicated than the existence of a positive laboratory number suggested. The subsequent scientific literature has not resolved those concerns in favor of broader interpretation. If anything, the most recent reviews have sharpened the distinction between detecting exposure and proving the conduct that employers seek to punish.

Yet NYPD is proceeding anyway.

Before New York taxpayers spend another $780,000 for hair analysis and the expert testimony used to defend it, the Department should be required to answer the question that survived nearly two decades of Boston litigation and remains unresolved in the contemporary academic literature: what, exactly, does this testing methodology reliably prove?

If the Science Is Reliable, Produce the Validation

At this point, the appropriate response from NYPD should not be another generalized assertion that hair testing is accepted, accurate, or necessary. The Department should identify the precise scientific propositions it believes Psychemedics hair testing can reliably establish and produce the validation supporting each one. That distinction matters because the contemporary literature does not seriously dispute that sophisticated laboratory instruments can detect drug-related compounds in hair. The dispute concerns what those findings actually prove. Detection of an analyte is one scientific proposition. Intentional ingestion is another. Frequency of use, approximate timing, dose, impairment, and a particular pattern of consumption are still others. If NYPD intends to impose discipline or terminate employment based upon any of those broader conclusions, then the Department should be prepared to demonstrate that each inference rests upon independently reproducible science rather than upon the laboratory’s own interpretation of its commercial methodology.

That disclosure should begin with the scientific foundation for the testing process itself. NYPD should produce the validation studies supporting the analytical methodology, screening process, confirmatory testing, cutoff concentrations, calibration procedures, limits of detection and quantification, quality-control protocols, proficiency-testing results, measurement uncertainty, false-positive and false-negative rates, chain-of-custody procedures, and laboratory error data. It should identify how those standards were derived, whether they were independently validated outside Psychemedics, whether they have changed over time, and whether different analytical procedures have ever produced materially different results from the same or comparable specimens. If cutoff concentrations are being used to distinguish incidental exposure from prohibited drug use, then NYPD should identify the scientific basis demonstrating that the selected threshold reliably performs that function.

The same transparency is required with respect to contamination and decontamination. That issue has persisted from the earliest hair-testing literature through the Boston litigation and into the most recent federal research. NYPD should identify the exact washing procedures used by Psychemedics, the scientific studies validating those procedures, the drugs and exposure scenarios under which the procedures were tested, and the known circumstances under which external contamination can remain after washing or migrate into the hair shaft. It should also disclose how the laboratory determines that a post-wash result reflects systemic incorporation rather than residual external contamination. If the methodology relies upon wash kinetics, metabolite ratios, concentration thresholds, or other interpretive criteria, those criteria and their validation should be produced in full. A vendor’s statement that its proprietary washing procedure is effective cannot substitute for independent scientific proof when that procedure is being used to distinguish innocent environmental exposure from intentional misconduct.

Pigmentation and individual biological variability require the same scrutiny. The scientific literature continues to recognize that melanin content can influence the incorporation of certain drugs into hair and that sweat, sebum, cosmetic treatment, hair growth rate, anatomical sampling location, and individual physiology can materially affect measured concentrations. NYPD should therefore disclose what studies it relies upon to conclude that these variables do not create materially different risks of detection or interpretation across employees. If the Department contends that its methodology neutralizes pigmentation-related differences, it should produce the empirical evidence supporting that proposition. If it does not account for those differences, it should explain how the Department has assessed the disparate-impact implications of continuing to use the methodology after the Boston litigation demonstrated a statistically significant racial disparity in positive results.

The Department should also identify exactly how it interprets concentration data. If Psychemedics or NYPD experts contend that a measured concentration demonstrates repeated use, frequent use, heavy use, or approximate quantity consumed, the scientific basis for those opinions should be produced. The 2026 Science & Justice review, “The Forensic Limits of Hair Drug Testing: A Critical Assessment of Drug Intake and Hair Concentration Relationships,” concluded that current evidence does not support reliable retrospective dose estimation from hair concentrations and that substantial overlap exists between low- and high-dose subjects. If NYPD continues to rely upon concentration as a proxy for frequency or quantity of use, it should explain how its position can be reconciled with that literature. A disciplinary system should not be permitted to convert a laboratory number into a narrative of intentional and repeated drug use without disclosing the scientific evidence that supposedly supports that conversion.

The same principle applies to the most fundamental inference of all: ingestion. The 2024 National Institute of Justice publication, “Detecting Drugs in Hair: Is It Drug Use or Environmental Contamination?,” highlighted the continuing scientific effort to distinguish actual drug use from environmental exposure and noted that washing procedures are not standardized. The fact that federally funded researchers are still developing alternative metabolite-based approaches to solve that problem is difficult to reconcile with any institutional position that commercial hair testing has already rendered the ingestion-versus-contamination question conclusively settled. If NYPD treats a positive Psychemedics result as proof of intentional drug use, then the Department should identify the validated method by which that conclusion is reached and demonstrate that the method performs reliably across drugs, exposure conditions, hair types, and specimen characteristics.

There is also a separate question of independence. NYPD’s current procurement expressly includes “expert witness services,” which means Psychemedics is not merely being paid to generate laboratory results. The same company can be compensated to interpret those results and defend the methodology in contested disciplinary proceedings. That arrangement makes the contractual and financial relationship directly relevant. The City should disclose the complete contract, all amendments and extensions, fee schedules, expert-witness rates, invoices, testimony-related payments, travel charges, preparation fees, and any separate compensation paid to Psychemedics personnel for appearances in administrative or judicial proceedings. It should identify how frequently Psychemedics employees have testified for NYPD, how often the same experts have appeared, and whether those witnesses receive compensation beyond the ordinary laboratory-testing fees.

The Department should also disclose the substance of that expert testimony. Prior testimony, reports, affidavits, validation claims, demonstrative materials, and opinions concerning ingestion, contamination, frequency of use, dose, and pigmentation should be available for comparison across cases. If the same expert has offered materially different explanations of the science in different proceedings, that matters. If the company’s interpretation of its methodology has changed over time, that matters. If opinions that were once presented as definitive are now materially qualified by later academic research, that matters. Repeat-player expertise should not operate behind a veil when the expert is being paid with public funds to support career-ending employment decisions.

The procurement process itself deserves comparable scrutiny. NYPD is extending the Psychemedics relationship through a Negotiated Acquisition Extension rather than treating the Boston experience and continuing scientific controversy as reasons to reconsider the testing regime from the ground up. The Department should therefore disclose the procurement justification, market analysis, alternatives considered, evaluations of competing testing methods, internal memoranda addressing the Boston litigation, any review of the federal regulatory gap, and any assessment of the current academic literature. It should identify whether NYPD considered urine, oral-fluid, blood-based, or sequential confirmatory approaches; whether less discriminatory alternatives were evaluated; and whether the Department examined the First Circuit’s analysis in Jones concerning an alternative testing structure that could serve the employer’s legitimate interests while reducing discriminatory impact.

That inquiry should extend beyond the $780,000 face value of the current contract. Taxpayers are not merely funding the laboratory work. They are funding the entire institutional architecture required to sustain the program: administrative prosecutions, expert appearances, hearing preparation, Corporation Counsel resources, Article 78 litigation, civil-rights defense costs, outside experts, back-pay exposure, settlement risk, and the years of litigation that can follow a disputed test. Boston demonstrates why the sticker price of a laboratory contract can bear little relationship to the ultimate public cost of relying upon the methodology. Any meaningful fiscal assessment should therefore disclose what NYPD has paid Psychemedics over the full course of the relationship, how much the City has spent litigating hair-testing disputes, what back-pay or settlement exposure has resulted, and whether any adverse employment decisions have later been modified, reversed, settled, or otherwise undermined.

The Department should also disclose outcome data. How many NYPD employees and applicants have tested positive through Psychemedics hair testing? How many were disciplined, terminated, disqualified, or otherwise suffered adverse employment consequences? How many contested the results? How many obtained independent testing using urine, oral fluid, blood, or another matrix, and how often did those tests conflict with the hair result? What are the demographic characteristics of employees receiving positive results, and has NYPD conducted a statistically competent disparate-impact analysis by race, ethnicity, sex, and other relevant categories? Boston’s Title VII litigation makes those questions unavoidable. A public employer that continues using the same testing technology after another major police department experienced a documented racial disparity should be able to demonstrate that it has examined its own data rather than assumed that the problem exists only elsewhere.

Most importantly, NYPD should explain what it learned from Boston. That history cannot be reduced to a single adverse decision or an isolated settlement. Boston defended Psychemedics testing through extensive Civil Service Commission proceedings, state appellate litigation, two First Circuit reversals in the federal disparate-impact case, a federal trial, remedial litigation, and a separate indemnification dispute with Psychemedics. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court revived Boston’s contractual claims against the vendor. Boston ultimately discontinued hair testing and paid $2.6 million to settle the federal civil-rights case. That history should have triggered a comprehensive reassessment by any other major police department using the same vendor and same general methodology.

Instead, New York City is preparing to spend another $780,000.

The federal government still has not adopted final Mandatory Guidelines for workplace hair testing. FDA’s substantive clinical-toxicology regulations do not establish hair as the corresponding analytical matrix for the drug-testing systems on which NYPD relies. The National Institute of Justice was still funding research in 2024 aimed specifically at solving the ingestion-versus-environmental-contamination problem. The Society of Hair Testing continues to publish detailed consensus recommendations addressing washing, preparation, quality control, and interpretation. A 2025 review in The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine continued to emphasize the complexity of drug incorporation into hair, and the 2026 Science & Justice review concluded that hair concentrations cannot reliably quantify dose or distinguish intentional ingestion from passive exposure.

Against that record, the burden should no longer rest on individual employees to repeatedly prove that unresolved scientific questions exist. The public agency choosing to continue the testing regime should be required to demonstrate why those questions no longer undermine the employment conclusions it draws from the results.

That is ultimately what government accountability requires here. NYPD is entitled to maintain a drug-free workforce and to investigate legitimate evidence of prohibited drug use. But those legitimate institutional interests do not relieve the Department of the obligation to use scientifically defensible methods, particularly when the consequence can be termination, loss of a career, reputational destruction, pension-related consequences, and years of litigation. Continued institutional use does not itself validate a methodology, and longstanding contractual relationships do not substitute for independent scientific scrutiny.

If the science is as reliable as NYPD and Psychemedics maintain, then produce the validation. Produce the methodology. Produce the limitations. Produce the outcome data. Produce the contamination studies. Produce the pigmentation studies. Produce the dose-concentration evidence. Produce the expert compensation records. Produce the procurement analysis. Produce the Department’s assessment of Boston.

Transparency should strengthen reliable science, not threaten it.

And if the City cannot produce that record, New York taxpayers are entitled to ask why they are paying another $780,000 for the test, the disciplinary machinery built around it, and the expert testimony purchased to defend it.

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