Another court ruling has cast a dim outlook for Florida's 2011 law requiring drug screenings of welfare recipients.

The law has been on hold ever since an Orlando judge's temporary injunction on Oct. 24, 2011. A ruling on Feb. 26 from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta affirmed the injunction.

About two years ago, Gov. Rick Scott signed the law passed by the Republican-led Legislature requiring applicants seeking Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, called TANF, to first pass a drug test.

On the day of the appellate court ruling, Scott vowed to appeal the "disturbing” decision all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"Welfare is 100 percent about helping children. Welfare is taxpayer money to help people looking for jobs who have children. Drug use by anyone with children looking for a job is totally destructive. This is fundamentally about protecting the well-being of Florida families,” Scott said in a statement.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals did not evaluate the constitutionality of Florida's law, though judges remarked they were skeptical of it surviving the lawsuit. In a 30-page decision, Judge Rosemary Barkett said attorneys for the state did not prove that children of families who receive TANF are more at risk without drug testing in place.

"There is nothing so special or immediate about the government's interest in ensuring that TANF recipients are drug free so as to warrant suspension of the Fourth Amendment,” Barkett wrote. "The only known and shared characteristic of the individuals who would be subjected to Florida's mandatory drug testing program is that they are financially needy families with children.”

A spokesman for the ACLU of Florida, which supported Navy veteran Luis Lebron in his lawsuit against the state, criticized Scott's "hasty” announcement that he would appeal to the Supreme Court. The Middle District Court of Florida, which issued the injunction, is likely to issue a summary judgment on the law sometime soon, and Scott could wait to act upon that, said spokesman Baylor Johnson.

"The ball is sort of in his court in terms of next steps,” he said, "But this was a pretty clear statement about what exactly this policy means for the rights of Floridians.”

Florida's four-month drug-testing run in 2011 yielded 108 negative drug tests, according to Department of Children and Families data. Only 2.6 percent of applicants who took the test failed, though supporters of the law say that does not account for people who walked away from the application process because they were on drugs.

The pass rate was 96.3 percent, leaving the state to pay more than $100,000 to adults who paid for the test and passed. The average time an adult receives TANF is four and a half months, said DCF spokesman Joe Follick.

On a related subject, oral arguments in the ACLU's legal challenge of a 2012 law requiring drug tests of state workers are scheduled for March 22, 2013.

As the state loses another battle, the outlook for the law looks less promising. We move the rating on the Scott-O-Meter to Stalled.