DRUG-TESTING OF JUST THESE KIDS?

By extending school districts' authority to randomly test athletes for
drugs to all students involved in extracurricular activities, the U.S.
Supreme Court missed the mark altogether.

In its eagerness to address the very real problem of widespread student
drug use, the top court sacrificed the privacy rights and protections
against unreasonable search and seizure of certain students without making
the case that such actions better ensure the well-being of all students.

In a 5-4 ruling Thursday, the court reversed a lower federal court's
ruling. A Denver appeals court had declared illegal the 1998 policy of a
rural Oklahoma school district that required drug-testing of students
involved in non-athletic, competitive extracurricular activities --
including the choir, chess club, cheerleading squad, and clubs for future
homemakers and farmers.

Not so the U.S. Supreme Court. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence
Thomas said that schools, to fulfill their duty to keep students safe and
healthy, have the right to drug-test certain students. By virtue of their
participation in activities, he said, those students gave up their
expectation of privacy.

"We find that testing students who participate in extracurricular
activities is a reasonably effective means of addressing the school
district's legitimate concerns in preventing, deterring and detecting drug
use," he wrote.

Former Tecumseh, Okla., student Lindsay Earls, an honor student and choir
student, didn't think so. She had challenged her school district's right to
administer a urine test that she and other students found invasive and
humiliating.

Indeed, the image of school staffs standing outside bathroom stalls to
collect urine samples is chilling.

Earls' school board had expanded its policy to check for such illegal drugs
as marijuana and cocaine, but not alcohol, from athletes to all youths
involved in extracurricular activities. Results were not turned over to
police, but school officials. Students who failed the drug tests would be
forced out of the activities, counseled and required to submit to monthly
drug tests.

Of 505 students tested in Tecumseh in the first two years of the policy,
three of them, all athletes, tested positive.

The permissibility of student athlete drug-testing was sanctioned by a 1995
Supreme Court ruling involving an Oregon district. The Vernonia school
board had voted to require students who play interscholastic sports to
undergo random drug-testing. The high court agreed.

The court made valid points then: Illegal street-drug use by athletes poses
physical risks to athletes and those they play with, and drug-testing is an
expansion of already-required physical exams for athletes. Supporters also
pointed out that athletes are unique role models within their schools and
communities.

But the Vernonia case also had a unique distinction: The policy was drawn
up because of a known drug problem in the district. As Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg noted in her dissent to Tuesday's Oklahoma ruling, "The Vernonia
district, in sum, had two good reasons for testing athletes: Sports team
members faced special health risks, and they 'were leaders of the drug
culture.' No similar reason, and no other tenable justification, explains
Tecumseh's decision to target for testing all participants in every
competitive extracurricular activity," she rightly objected.

In fact, as Ginsburg and Lindsay Earls' attorneys pointed out, students
involved in extracurricular activities nationwide are less likely to
develop substance-abuse problems. Even if the policy were a deterrent from
drug use, Ginsburg wrote, "it is at least as likely that other students
might forgo their extracurricular involvement in order to avoid detection
of their drug use." The policy, she said, falls doubly short.

And, we would add, so does the ruling. One measure of its illogic, if not
absurdity, can be found in Ginsburg's description of the students and
activities targeted by the school district policy:

"Notwithstanding nightmarish images of out-of-control flatware, livestock
run amok, and colliding tubas disturbing the peace and quiet of Tecumseh,
the great majority of students the School District seeks to test in truth
are engaged in activities that are not safety-sensitive to an unusual
degree. There is a difference between imperfect tailoring and no tailoring
at all."

And, we would suggest, tailoring for all. There may very well be a time, in
certain school districts facing overwhelming drug-use problems, to require
random testing of all students, not just athletes -- and certainly not just
those students who have the initiative to sign up for extra activities.

Selective policies, like Tecumseh's, may be well-intentioned, but they come
at too great a cost to student rights. And while they may catch or deter a
handful of students from drug use, they do nothing to address drug
distribution in schools.