COURT BARS DRUG TESTS OF PREGNANT WOMEN

WASHINGTON In a victory for civil liberties advocates and abortion
rights groups, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that hospitals
cannot administer drug tests to pregnant women without their consent
and forward positive results to the police.

By a vote of 6 to 3, the court held that the drug tests conducted in
the past by a public hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, amounted
to warrantless police searches of the women. The searches could not
be justified by local authorities' expressed interests in protecting
the health of the women or their unborn children.

The case had aroused strong feelings because of its potential
practical effect on the scope of police power and because it touched
on questions of racial discrimination and the legal status of fetal
life.

The hospital's patient population is overwhelmingly poor and
African-American. All but one of the 30 women arrested under the
policy were black. Mothers who tested positive faced charges because
cocaine use is illegal and because, under state law, a viable fetus
is a "person" and a woman who takes cocaine while pregnant may be
accused of distributing illegal drugs to a minor or of committing
child abuse.

The court ruled that even an ostensibly well-intentioned curtailment
of privacy rights does not necessarily qualify for the "special
needs" exception to the search warrant requirement.

"Given the primary purpose of the Charleston program, which was to
use the threat of arrest and prosecution in order to force women into
treatment, and given the extensive involvement of law enforcement
officials at every stage of the policy, this case simply does not
fit" previously established exceptions to the search warrant
requirement, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the court majority.
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter, Stephen Breyer and Ruth
Bader Ginsburg agreed. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a separate
concurring opinion.

Ten women sued the hospital in 1993, saying the policy violated the
constitution. The hospital, which treats indigent patients, later
dropped the policy, but by then the police had arrested 30 maternity
patients.

A federal jury ruled for the hospital and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals agreed in 1999. The appeals court said the urine tests
were "minimally intrusive."

Justice Antonin Scalia dissented from the ruling, which awarded
damages to the plaintiffs. He argued both that the drug tests did not
constitute a search under the Fourth Amendment and that, even if it
did, it would have been justified under the "special needs" test.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas joined
him, but only on the second point.

In a separate case that will have broad effects on American
workplaces, the justices ruled that employers can force workers to
take job-related disputes to arbitration rather than to court.

Agreements to arbitrate workplace disputes are enforceable even if
the employer required the worker to sign the agreement in order to be
hired, the court said. Ruling, 5 to 4, for Circuit City Stores, the
justices said a gay former employee cannot sue over alleged
harassment at work and has to go to arbitration instead.

Justice Kennedy wrote the opinion, which was joined by Justices
Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and O'Connor. Justices Stevens, Ginsburg,
Breyer and Souter dissented.