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A fitness test is an effective and legal device for screening first responders, but only when designed and implemented in a particular way. Though some believe that the daily demands of public safety professionals are enough to maintain adequate levels of fitness, this is a faulty and dangerous assumption. Even though the most common tasks performed by first responders do not involve physical exertion, the primary goal of training and fitness should be to ensure that first responders are able to get to, control and remove a threat to public safety. Because individuals with poor fitness may be incapable of performing these essential tasks, departments with lax or no standards are at risk for lawsuits based on negligence and deliberate indifference. Implementing overly-stringent standards is hardly a panacea for a department's litigation woes. If standards are based on, relative to, or disparately impact members of a protected class, then rejected applicants may allege discrimination under state or federal law.

The events of Sept. 11, 2001 changed airport security forever. Many of the policies put in place in the aftermath of those terrorist attacks persist today. Agents from the Transportation Security Administration and Federal Aviation Administration, in particular, are tasked with following those directives to ensure safety at airports. However, a series of high-profile incidents-such as a November 2013 shooting of a TSA officer at a Los Angeles airport-raised concerns that airports lack sufficient manpower, training and resources to adequately prepare these personnel for that assignment.