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. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth