COURT RULINGS SIGNAL A SHIFT ON RANDOM DRUG TESTS IN SCHOOLS

Six years after a United States Supreme Court ruling upheld random drug
testing of student athletes, spurring hundreds of school districts to adopt
similar policies, several recent court decisions have struck down broader
programs that test nonathletes.

Some experts say the newer rulings reflect a shift in the public's approach
to preventing drug use.

Last week, the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, in
Denver, said the Tecumseh, Okla., school district violated students'
constitutional rights by requiring drug tests for anyone who participated
in interscholastic activities.

Early this month, a federal judge rejected mandatory drug testing for all
students in grades seven through 12 in Lockney, Tex., a town northeast of
Lubbock. And state courts in Indiana, New Jersey, Oregon and Pennsylvania
have expressed similar reservations about such policies in the last seven
months.

"The political and legal atmosphere is really changing," said Graham A.
Boyd, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's drug policy
litigation project, which has brought most of the school cases. "There's
not just the knee-jerk reaction against any effort to challenge a policy
that purports to be about pursuing the war on drugs."

The move toward drug testing, and the recent rulings against it, come amid
a broader school safety crackdown that has restricted student freedom.
Districts are increasing the use of metal detectors and locker searches,
and sometimes discipline students for even speaking or writing about violence.

At the same time, however, the national attitude toward the drug war has
shown signs of changing. Several governors have recently suggested a shift
in emphasis from punishment to prevention, and the Supreme Court has
rejected random drug tests twice this term, in cases involving pregnant
women and highway checkpoints.

For educators, the question of drug testing is part of a perennial
balancing act between protecting students' rights and protecting their safety.

"How do we help them stay out of trouble, stay off drugs, and still respect
their privacy and teach them about their constitutional rights?" said Julie
Underwood, general counsel for the National School Boards Association,
which helped defend the Oklahoma policy but opposes testing for all
students as in Lockney and another small Texas town, Sundown, southwest of
Lubbock.

"In the public schools, it's a wonderful place for students to learn about
life in a democracy," Ms. Underwood said. "You don't want students to feel
like they are in a police state."

On the other hand, Lee Veness, a lawyer who defended the Lockney district,
said: "Why should we only pick on athletes? You either test them all or none."

Districts began adopting suspicionless drug testing in large numbers after
the 1995 Supreme Court decision that said mandatory testing of athletes in
Vernonia, Ore., was legal because athletes were at the center of a drug
problem in the district, and because the students had accepted some
invasion of privacy by volunteering for teams where they shared locker-room
showers.

In 1998, the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in
Chicago, upheld an Indiana program testing students in nonathletic
extracurricular programs, which set off a wave of such policies around the
nation. (The Indiana policy was challenged again on state constitutional
grounds and has been struck down, a decision that is on appeal.)

The federal decision in the Indiana case conflicts with the more recent
ruling in the Oklahoma case, laying the groundwork for a possible return to
the United States Supreme Court on the question of testing for nonathletes.
(The Oklahoma ruling also said the district had failed to prove it had a
significant drug problem caused by those who were being tested, leaving
open the possibility that a similar policy at another school might be upheld.)

"It goes back and forth; it's kind of a pendulum," Ms. Underwood said.
"We're establishing the boundaries."

Though the crucial legal questions concern where students' constitutional
rights diverge from adults' rights and how schools are to handle their "in
loco parentis" responsibilities, there is also a debate over whether drug
testing of high school students is an effective deterrent.

Student surveys indicate that drug testing reduces drug use, but social
workers and other experts say testing can be counterproductive by making
drugs seem more appealing to rebellious teenagers or driving them to
harder-core drugs, like heroin, that are less easily detected in urine tests.

Last year, 41 percent of high school seniors and 36 percent of sophomores
said they had used drugs in the past year, down from 42 percent of seniors
and 39 percent of sophomores in 1997, according to the Monitoring the
Future study at the University of Michigan. Among eighth graders, 20
percent of those surveyed last year said they had used drugs in the
previous 12 months, down from a high of 24 percent in 1996.

"There's a drug problem in America's schools," said Linda M. Meoli of the
Center for Education Law, which defended the school district in the case in
Tecumseh, a rural town about 45 miles southeast of Oklahoma City. "They
have drug dogs, they have policemen, they have cameras, and there are still
drugs in the school. They have to try everything they possibly can."

Lindsay Earls, the Tecumseh student who brought the lawsuit, succumbed to
her third drug test on Tuesday, the day before her court victory. It will
be her last, as she will graduate in May and will head for the University
of Oklahoma, where she plans to major in political science before going to
law school.

"It's not any of their business what medications I'm taking, whether or not
I'm using drugs," Ms. Earls, 18, said. "I feel like that's my parents'
business."

"I've seen that you really can change someone's life through the law," she
said. "Our Constitution's a beautiful thing, and people need to be willing
to stand up and fight for it."