Pubdate: Fri, 28 Jun 2002
Source: Buffalo News (NY)
Copyright: 2002 The Buffalo News
Contact:  http://www.buffalonews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/61
Author: Charles Lane, Washington Post

COURT WIDENS DRUG TESTS FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

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 5-4, 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 that noted the special safety risks and 
lower expectation of privacy inherent in sports, as well as the fact that 
athletes are role models for other students.

But, writing for the majority Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear 
the court had a much broader rationale in mind - the schools' 
quasi-parental role with regard to their young charges.

"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.

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 that 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 leading congressional proponent of school drug testing predicted that 
school districts will see the court's ruling as a "green light." "Until 
today, the American Civil Liberties Union has been able to hold out the 
threat of a lawsuit and scare school boards out of implementing drug 
testing," Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., said. "With this Supreme Court 
decision, and with funding now available to schools, . . . school boards 
across the country can begin to make our schools safer for every child."

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul 
Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter, wrote that "the particular 
testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is capricious, even 
perverse: (It) targets for testing a student population least likely to be 
at risk for illicit drugs and their damaging effects."

Ginsburg had joined the court's 1995 decision allowing drug testing of 
athletes, but she wrote Thursday that she viewed the earlier case as 
premised on its special circumstances, such as the danger of playing sports 
under the influence of drugs and the pervasiveness of the drug problem in a 
specific school.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens