Pubdate: Sat, 24 Nov 2001
Source: Florida Today (FL)
Copyright: 2001 Florida Today
Contact: http://www.floridatoday.com/forms/services/letters.htm
Website: http://www.flatoday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/532

HIGH COURT NEEDS TO SET STRICT LIMITS ON DRUG TESTS

The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case that should be 
followed closely by Brevard County school officials, local parents and 
students.

The court said it would decide whether public schools may drug-test nearly 
any student involved in after-school activities in situations in which 
there is no evidence that the student or the school has a drug problem.

The outcome of the case could affect Brevard County schools if the School 
Board ever decides to implement such drug testing.

An anti-drug activist has suggested that students should be tested 
routinely as a prerequisite for participating in extracurricular activities 
such as band or cheerleading, and similar proposals are heard periodically.

In the case before the high court, the American Civil Liberties Union filed 
suit on behalf of students in Tecumseh, Okla., who objected to the drug 
tests. They argued that being denied access to such activities would put 
them at a disadvantage in their college applications.

"I felt they were accusing us and convicting us before they had given us a 
chance," said Lindsey Earls, who sang in her high school choir and 
participated in a high school quiz team when the testing began at her school.

Only students involved in competitive extracurricular activities were 
tested, on the theory that by voluntarily representing the school, they had 
opened themselves to greater scrutiny than other students.

"It was not where the problem was, but where (school officials) thought 
they could, in essence, legally get away with drug testing," said Graham 
Boyd, the ACLU lawyer representing the students.

In a 1995 Oregon case, the Supreme Court said a school with a pervasive 
drug problem legally could submit student athletes to drug tests, but did 
not address schoolwide testing or extracurricular activities.

"This case gives the court the opportunity to draw the line at random 
testing of students," Boyd said.

A decision is expected next summer.

In the Oklahoma case, an appeals court struck down that state's drug- 
testing policy, and state courts in Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and 
Pennsylvania have expressed similar reservations about such policies in the 
past few years.

Legalities aside, random drug testing of students is a tactic that should 
be used only as a last resort, and then only in a school with a serious and 
pervasive drug problem.

Like adults, students have rights - to privacy, to respect as human beings, 
to a presumption of innocence.

Those rights should not be trampled upon in any well-meaning but misguided 
effort to trap substance abusers.
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MAP posted-by: Beth