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.
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