Pubdate: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 Source: International Herald-Tribune (France) Copyright: International Herald Tribune 2001 Contact: 181, Avenue Charles de Gaulle, 92521 Neuilly Cedex, France Fax: (33) 1 41 43 93 38 Website: http://www.iht.com/ COURT BARS DRUG TESTS OF PREGNANT WOMEN WASHINGTON In a victory for civil liberties advocates and abortion rights groups, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that hospitals cannot administer drug tests to pregnant women without their consent and forward positive results to the police. By a vote of 6 to 3, the court held that the drug tests conducted in the past by a public hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, amounted to warrantless police searches of the women. The searches could not be justified by local authorities' expressed interests in protecting the health of the women or their unborn children. The case had aroused strong feelings because of its potential practical effect on the scope of police power and because it touched on questions of racial discrimination and the legal status of fetal life. The hospital's patient population is overwhelmingly poor and African-American. All but one of the 30 women arrested under the policy were black. Mothers who tested positive faced charges because cocaine use is illegal and because, under state law, a viable fetus is a "person" and a woman who takes cocaine while pregnant may be accused of distributing illegal drugs to a minor or of committing child abuse. The court ruled that even an ostensibly well-intentioned curtailment of privacy rights does not necessarily qualify for the "special needs" exception to the search warrant requirement. "Given the primary purpose of the Charleston program, which was to use the threat of arrest and prosecution in order to force women into treatment, and given the extensive involvement of law enforcement officials at every stage of the policy, this case simply does not fit" previously established exceptions to the search warrant requirement, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court majority. Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg agreed. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a separate concurring opinion. Ten women sued the hospital in 1993, saying the policy violated the constitution. The hospital, which treats indigent patients, later dropped the policy, but by then the police had arrested 30 maternity patients. A federal jury ruled for the hospital and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 1999. The appeals court said the urine tests were "minimally intrusive." Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the ruling, which awarded damages to the plaintiffs. He argued both that the drug tests did not constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment and that, even if it did, it would have been justified under the "special needs" test. Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined him, but only on the second point. In a separate case that will have broad effects on American workplaces, the justices ruled that employers can force workers to take job-related disputes to arbitration rather than to court. Agreements to arbitrate workplace disputes are enforceable even if the employer required the worker to sign the agreement in order to be hired, the court said. Ruling, 5 to 4, for Circuit City Stores, the justices said a gay former employee cannot sue over alleged harassment at work and has to go to arbitration instead. Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion, which was joined by Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and O'Connor. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, Breyer and Souter dissented. - --- MAP posted-by: Kirk Bauer