SUPREME COURT RULES HOSPITALS MUST HAVE CONSENT TO RELEASE INFO TO
POLICE

WASHINGTON (AP) Public hospitals cannot test pregnant women for drugs
and turn the results over to police without consent, the U.S. Supreme
Court said yesterday in a ruling that buttressed the Constitution's
protection against unreasonable searches.

Some women who tested positive for drugs at a South Carolina public
hospital had been arrested from their beds shortly after giving birth.

The justices ruled 6-3 that such testing without patients' consent
violated the Constitution even though the goal was to prevent women from
harming their fetuses by using crack cocaine.

"It's a very, very important decision in protecting the right to privacy
of all Americans," said Priscilla Smith, a lawyer for the Center for
Reproductive Law and Policy, who represented the South Carolina women.
"It reaffirms that pregnant women have that same right to a confidential
relationship with their doctors."

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court that while the ultimate
goal of the hospital's testing program may have been to get women into
drug treatment, "the immediate objective of the searches was to generate
evidence for law enforcement purposes in order to reach that goal."

When hospitals gather evidence "for the specific purpose of
incriminating those patients, they have a special obligation to make
sure that the patients are fully informed about their constitutional
rights," Stevens wrote in the case of Ferguson v. City of Charleston.

South Carolina Attorney General Charles Condon, who as a local
prosecutor in Charleston began the testing program, issued a statement
saying the program could continue if police get a search warrant or the
patient's consent.

"There is no right of a mother to jeopardize the health and safety of an
unborn child through her own drug abuse," Condon wrote.

Condon developed the policy along with officials at the Medical
University of South Carolina, a Charleston hospital that treats indigent
patients. The women were arrested under the state's child-endangerment
law, but their lawyers contended that the policy was counterproductive
and would deter women from seeking prenatal care.

Stevens' opinion was joined by Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David H.
Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer. Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy filed a separate opinion also concluding that such tests are
unlawful.

Dissenting were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin
Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Writing for the three, Scalia said that
doctors were supposed to have patients' welfare in mind, and "that they
have in mind in addition the provision of evidence to the police should
make no difference."

The justices ordered a lower court to consider the Charleston hospital's
argument that the women had actually consented to the tests.

The Constitution's Fourth Amendment generally requires that searches be
authorized by a court warrant or based on reasonable suspicion that a
crime has been committed.

The Supreme Court has allowed drug testing without a warrant or
individual suspicion when the government can demonstrate a special need
- - for example, preventing drug use by public high school students or by
railroad workers. However, the results in such cases would not be turned
over to police.

"The invasion of privacy in this case is far more substantial than in
those cases," Stevens wrote, noting that patients normally expect
medical test results to be kept private.

The decision reversed a federal appeals court ruling that said the South
Carolina hospital's drug-testing policy was a valid effort to reduce the
use of crack cocaine by pregnant women.

The hospital began the testing in 1989 during the crack cocaine
epidemic. If a woman's urine test indicated cocaine use, she was
arrested for distributing the drug to a minor. In 1990, the hospital
gave drug-using maternity patients a choice between arrest or enrollment
in drug treatment.

Ten women sued the hospital in 1993, saying the policy violated the
Constitution. The hospital soon dropped the policy, but by then police
had arrested 30 women, all but one of them African American.

The Supreme Court ruling was one of several recent decisions that have
buttressed the protection against unreasonable searches. Last year, the
justices said that police cannot set up random roadblocks to hunt for
illegal drugs, and that police must get travelers' consent or a court
warrant before squeezing their luggage to see whether drugs might be
inside.

But in February, the justices ruled that police who believe that drug
suspects will destroy evidence can keep the suspects from entering their
homes until police obtain a search warrant.