COURT RULING GIVES KIDS AWFUL CIVICS LESSON

Many Americans would agree that perhaps our schools' highest calling is to
teach the basics of good citizenship to coming generations. Among those
civic principles is the belief that our system of laws makes sense -- and
protects our Rights.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court undermined that message recently with
a confused and contrary ruling that not only gives students an awful civics
lesson but continues a slide down a slippery slope in which all citizens'
basic expectations of privacy, due process and more are increasingly
pre-empted by government imperatives.

In a case from supposedly drug-infested Pottawatomie County, Okla., the
court ruled that it is constitutionally permissible for public middle and
high schools to conduct random, suspicion-less drug testing of students who
are engaged in extracurricular activities.

Now, children are traditionally judged to have differing expectations of
privacy from adults, especially once they enter the schoolhouse doors. For
example, in 1995 the court ruled that high school athletes can be required
to undergo drug testing -- partly because locker-room culture has
acclimated them to less privacy, but mostly because the risks of injury to
self or others in a contact sport is greatest; if an athlete is under the
influence.

This was deemed a "special-needs" exception in which a compelling
govern-mental interest outweighed individual rights.

But now, in a real stretch, the court claims this exception also applies to
students who participate in the glee club, debate team, honor society,
academic squad, concert band and the like groups whose activities, the
court incredibly claims, lend themselves to states of communal undress."
Where did these justices go to school?

Goodness knows, sonic pothead in the Chess Club could hurt someone by
performing the Sicilian Defense while high.

Think about this illogic for a minute. Statistics constantly show that
students who are involved in extracurricular are far less likely to get
involved in drugs. These are the kids who are motivated to stay clean,
excel and further their education. But it's OK to target them, not the
general school population, for random drug tests based not on any
suspicion. well-founded or not, but just because Drugs Arc Bad And We Rave
To Send! Message. unfamiliar So the Science Fair participant with the
unfamiliar low-privacy milieu of towel-snapping linebackers must now
en-dure a faculty member outside a bathroom stall listening for the "normal
sounds of urination."

Such invasive, arbitrary and fallible tests -- and the threat of sanctions
they inherently carry -- could drive students away from extracurricular
activities, leaving them more vulnerable to unsavory activities such as,
oh, let's see, drug use. This is counterproductive to say the least.

'The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is
capricious, even perverse," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote in a scathing
dissent that dissected the soft underbelly of Justice Clarence Thomas' the
end justifies the means majority opinion.

Justice Ginsberg's opinion would have been the majority view, were it not
for a rather weird alli- ance that saw liberal Justice Stephen Breyer
taking the side of conservatives Thomas, Antonin Scalia et al.

Justice Breyer's stance is baffling -- until you dig into his concur- ring
opinion and unearth this cynical rationale: If public schools fail to test
students for drugs, parents will put their children into private and
parochial schools, and (honors!) they might even use those infernal
vouchers the court had just approved in Ohio's Zelman case.

How's that for jurisprudence?

But wait, It gets weirder.

The Pottawatomie ruling continued a string of cases expanding the list of
Americans who are compelled to pee into a cup in order to go about their
lives, and the reasons for which they could be tested. It decided that
railroad workers could be tested to guard public safety, then extended that
principle to rule that U.S. Customs officials could be tested simply to
guarantee they are physically fit and full of integrity.

Then the 1995 Vernonia vs. Acton ruling applied this to high school athletes.

In fact, the only time the court put on the drug-test brakes was when it
tossed out a Georgia law that required candidates for some state offices to
undergo drug screening. Huh? If anybody ought to be tested, it's
politicians who operate the heavy machinery of government

In the Vernonia student-athlete case, it was shown that the schools in
question had a pervasive drug problem of 'epidemic proportions," and that
athletes were the leaders of that culture.

Pottawatomie County's drug "problem" was mainly that some students had been
overheard "speaking openly" about drugs and that a reefer had been found
near a school parking lot. Only three students -- all of them athletes --
had tested positive out of 505.

The school district itself had even argued, in applying for a federal Safe
and Drug-Free Schools grant, that it did not have a major drug problem.

So Justice Thomas simply reasoned that while the district may not have a
drug problem now, it should test in case it someday becomes a problem.

That's the same logic by which Ohio officials think it's OK to catalog the
DNA of innocent citizens just in ease they commit a felony someday.

In short, the majority simply plundered its precedents, changed the
criteria and twisted the facts to arrive at a result that, while it may be
desirable, invites abuse.

By the court's new standard, you could readily argue for the
constitutionality of doing random, suspicion less drug testing of all
Americans for their own good. As a result of its pretzel logic, the
"special needs" exception has be-come the rule by which the government's
interest can easily trump Civil liberties. Sound familiar in these War on
Terrorism days?

If the court had essayed a finely tuned discussion to clarify and
illuminate children's constitutional rights when they enter the
school-house door and schools' responsibility to protect students' health,
that would be one thing. But this clumsy, overbroad ruling opens the door
wide to further diminishing the constitutional protection against
unreasonable search and seizure that all of us should enjoy.

One consolation may be that "all of us" includes a certain elite club of
nine black-robed judges who apparently like to chew on the Bill of Rights
when they get the munchies.

At least we still have the right to know what those folks have been smoking.