Pubdate: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA) Copyright: 2003 PG Publishing Contact: http://www.post-gazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/341 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth) Editorial WITHOUT SUSPICION - STATE JUSTICES WISELY RULE AGAINST BROAD DRUG TESTS Hurrah for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. While the war on drugs in America has helped pave the proverbial road to hell with good intentions -- and even the U.S. Supreme Court has blinked at civil rights violations flowing from anti-drug fervor -- Pennsylvania's top court has offered a ruling full of good sense. In a preliminary phase of a case, a three-justice panel ruled Nov. 20 that "suspicion-less" drug testing in high schools in the commonwealth was a problem under the state constitution, even though the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled such searches constitutional under the Fourth Amendment. The ruling was confirmation that, in Pennsylvania, a stronger notion of privacy prevails in the law. It also served to illustrate what was wrong with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in a similar case. An opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ever the reactionary, rejected an exemplary student's objection to having been tested for drugs as a condition of belonging to the National Honor Society and the school choir. The Pennsylvania case rivaled the federal case in its absurdity. Standing common sense on its head, the Delaware Valley School District in Pike County instituted an overly broad drug and alcohol testing program for "student leaders" -- those involved in extracurricular programs -- as well as athletes and students who drove to school. Meanwhile, the slackers, the very ones who might be supposed to be using drugs or alcohol, were not included in the program. As the opinion by Justice Ronald D. Castille noted, "Nothing in this statement of purpose, or in any other pleading of record, suggests that the class of students targeted for random testing were the source of an existing, active drug problem in the district." It appeared, Justice Castille wrote, that certain students were "targeted for symbolic reasons, since they were deemed to be 'role models.' " So that is what it has come to in the war on drugs -- role models singled out for attention in the name of a better educational environment, and this, moreover, in the absence of convincing evidence that a drug problem existed in the district at all. One might call this strange policy the Revenge on the Nerds, because simply being in the chess club would open a student for testing. This is indeed good intentions gone awry. The school district's fault was not in trying to address drug use, as Justice Castille fully acknowledged in his opinion. The problem was that the school district went too far. It forgot that it is in the business of teaching citizenship. As Justice Castille wisely put it, "What lesson does a program targeting the personal privacy of some but not all students, and lacking both individualized suspicion or any reasoned basis for a suspicion-less search, teach our young?" Although this case is still in a preliminary stage and awaits further court action, the obvious answer to Justice Castille's question needs to be considered by more districts in Pennsylvania than the one in Pike County. - --- MAP posted-by: Jackl