Pubdate: Wed, 20 Mar 2002
Source: Daily Times, The (TN)
Copyright: 2002 Horvitz Newspapers
Contact:  http://www.thedailytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1455
Author: Joan Biskupic, Gannett News Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

SUPREME COURT OPEN TO STUDENT DRUG TESTS

WASHINGTON -- Several Supreme Court justices appeared ready Tuesday to 
uphold drug testing for high school students who join the band, debate team 
or other any competitive extracurricular activity.

During a fierce session of arguments over an Oklahoma school district's 
testing policy, the justices expressed concern about drug use and appeared 
open to a policy of testing the urine of students who have no record of 
drug problems and who are in activities other than athletics. The court has 
backed such testing for athletes.

"You think life and death is not an issue in the fight against drugs?" 
Justice Antonin Scalia asked, challenging an American Civil Liberties Union 
attorney representing students who protested the Oklahoma district's policy 
as an invasion of privacy rights.

The justices' questioning of attorney Graham Boyd was unusually 
antagonistic. At one point, Justice Anthony Kennedy posed a scenario 
involving two schools: one that required drug tests and whose students were 
clean and the other, a "druggie school." He told Boyd that most people 
would choose the first school, except, perhaps, "your client."

Boyd countered that his client, Lindsay Earls, now a freshman at Dartmouth 
College, had tested negative for drugs in high school. Earls said she 
challenged the testing because she believed it violated her privacy and she 
found it humiliating to urinate in a bathroom stall with a teacher waiting 
outside.

During the hour-long session, the frustration of the two justices who most 
obviously objected to the policy as a privacy infringement, Sandra Day 
O'Connor and David Souter, was palpable. "It seems so odd to try to 
penalize those students" who join activities such as choir and are less 
likely to be on drugs than many others, O'Connor said. Souter said that if 
the school district wins, it might lead to testing of all public school 
students, regardless of their after-school activities.

Tuesday's case, which tests the breadth of Fourth Amendment protections 
against unreasonable searches, will determine how far schools can go to try 
to keep students off drugs. A ruling will affect the legitimacy of testing 
programs that have spread across the country since 1995.

That year, the court allowed such tests for student athletes, citing the 
safety concerns involved in sports and noting that athletes usually undress 
together and have lower expectations of privacy.

In 1998, schools in Pottawatomie County, about 40 miles southeast of 
Oklahoma City, began requiring students in all interscholastic 
extracurricular activities to undergo random urinalysis.

A U.S. appeals court ruled against the program. It distinguished athletics 
from other extracurricular activities and said the district had not 
sufficiently identified a drug-abuse problem among the students to be screened.

Linda Meoli, lawyer for the school district, told the justices that the 
district's program is a natural extension of testing athletes. She said the 
program helps students resist peer pressure, because they can claim that if 
they succumb to drugs they will flunk the urinalysis and not be able to 
participate in chosen activities.

"What we really want to do is help students," Meoli said. She noted that 
the court has given officials considerable latitude to regulate students in 
the school setting.

Siding with the Oklahoma district, U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Paul 
Clement told the justices, "Children today are on the front lines of the 
drug problem."

Boyd countered that schools should not be able to force students to give 
urine samples unless there is evidence of drug use or a question of safety, 
as arose in the 1995 case from Vernonia, Ore.

That case was decided by a 6-3 vote; Justices O'Connor, Souter and John 
Paul Stevens dissented. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who then was in the 
majority that supported testing athletes, suggested by her questions 
Tuesday that she might find testing non-athletes unconstitutional.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager