Pubdate: Fri, 28 Jun 2002
Source: Sun News (SC)
Copyright: 2002 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://web.thesunnews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987
Author: Charles Lane, The Washington Post
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

SUPREME COURT: DRUG TESTS OK FOR STUDENT ACTIVITIES

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court gave its approval Thursday to the random 
drug testing of public high-school students in extracurricular activities, 
a ruling that increases the tools available to some 14,700 public school 
systems to fight illegal drug use. By a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled 
that local school officials' responsibility for the health and safety of 
their students can outweigh those students' concerns about privacy. 
Therefore, mandatory drug testing of students in activities such as band, 
Future Farmers of America and chess does not violate the constitutional 
prohibition on "unreasonable" searches, the court said.

The court had already authorized mandatory random drug testing for 
student-athletes in a 1995 case.

Writing for the majority Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the 
court had the schools' quasi-parental role with regard to their young 
charges in mind.

"A student's privacy interest is limited in a public school environment 
where the state is responsible for maintaining discipline, health and 
safety," Thomas wrote. "Schoolchildren are routinely required to submit to 
physical examinations and vaccinations against disease. Securing order in 
the school environment sometimes requires that students be subjected to 
greater controls than those appropriate for adults."

Given that, under the Tecumseh, Okla., policy at issue Thursday, students 
can neither be prosecuted nor expelled from school, Thomas wrote, the 
privacy invasion is "not significant," whereas "the nationwide drug 
epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in every school."

Thomas was joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin 
Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.

The decision could encourage more school districts to try policies similar 
to the one in rural Tecumseh, which school authorities instituted in 1998. 
Under that policy, students who refuse to take the test, or test positive 
more than twice, face banishment from extracurricular activities for the 
rest of the school year.

Lindsey Earls, a former student at Tecumseh High School who is now an 
undergraduate at Dartmouth College, had challenged the policy in federal 
court, saying her constitutional rights were violated when, as a condition 
of participating in a competitive singing group, teachers required her to 
urinate into a cup while they listened nearby to prevent cheating.

A federal judge in Oklahoma sided with the school authorities, but the 
Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed with Earls, 
who was aided in the case by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Testing students for drug use is popular among parents and, under 
legislation signed by President Bush last year, $472 million is available 
to pay for it.
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MAP posted-by: Beth