HIGH COURT ENDORSES DRUG POLICY

WASHINGTON - Upholding the federal government's "one strike and you're out"
drug policy for low-income housing projects, the Supreme Court ruled
Tuesday that a public housing tenant may be evicted if any member of his or
her household, or a guest, is caught using illegal drugs -- even if the
tenant was unaware of the drug use.

The case originated in 1998 with a federal lawsuit by four evicted public
housing tenants from Oakland, Calif., including Pearlie Rucker, 63, a
great-grandmother whose mentally disabled daughter was arrested near their
apartment complex on charges of possessing crack cocaine.

Rucker and the other former tenants said that the "one strike and you're
out" law, passed by Congress and signed in 1988 by President Reagan,
couldn't have been intended to punish unwitting individuals. A federal
appeals court agreed with the tenants last year.

But in a unanimous opinion written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the
Supreme Court held that Congress had spoken "unambiguously" when it
authorized the policy.

"[T]here is an obvious reason why Congress would have permitted local
public housing authorities to conduct no-fault evictions," Rehnquist wrote,
quoting the language of federal regulations implementing the law.
"Regardless of knowledge, a tenant who 'cannot control drug crime, or other
criminal activities by a household member which threaten health or safety
of other residents, is a threat to other residents and the project.' "

Noting that Congress had found a drug dealer-imposed "reign of terror" in
public housing, the court seemed to view the case as a straightforward
landlord-tenant matter in which tenants had signed a lease promising that
no one in their apartments would use drugs -- period. Such no-fault
evictions are common under normal landlord-tenant law, Rehnquist's opinion
observed.

"One strike and you're out" enjoyed bipartisan support as part of the same
movement toward "tough love" social policy that produced the 1995 welfare
reform bill.

In March 1996, President Clinton ordered the Department of Housing and
Urban Development to encourage stiffer enforcement of the policy by the
nation's 3,200 public housing authorities. It applies both to 1.2 million
families in public housing projects and those who receive HUD subsidies to
rent private apartments, a HUD official said Tuesday.

HUD's Web site bills "one strike and you're out" as "the toughest
admissions and eviction policy that HUD has implemented."

HUD issued a statement Tuesday calling the court's ruling "a great victory
for families in public housing who want to be free from those who
infiltrate their community with drugs or commit violent crimes."

[In the Triangle, Frank Meachem, Durham Housing Authority deputy director,
said the ruling has little effect on the authority. It tries not to
penalize elderly leaseholders or an entire family when a member of a
household is charged with a drug offense, he said.

["We deal with the root cause," he said. "We try to come up with a win-win
situation."

[Everyone in the household must sign a memorandum of agreement, stipulating
that the person involved can't be on the property. If that's violated,
Meachem said, the family would be evicted. About six cases yearly have been
handled that way over the past four years, he said.]

Gary Lafayette, an attorney who represented the Oakland Housing Authority
in the case, said the court's decision recognized that, harsh as the
penalty imposed on evicted residents might seem, other poor people would
pay the price if authorities are denied all the power they need to keep the
projects drug-free.

"This will change things dramatically," he said. "One of the things that
can now happen is we can remove families that are not going to follow the
rules relating to drugs and drug-related activity ... and replace them with
families on the waiting list for apartments, which runs to 7,000 families."

Lafayette noted that the Oakland Housing Authority faced a lawsuit in the
past from tenants claiming that it had failed to be tough enough on drugs.

There are no precise statistics on how many people have been evicted under
the policy, but it has been criticized as draconian and unfair by advocates
for low-income residents, who have assembled many anecdotes of unwitting
tenants put out on the street to illustrate the argument that poor people
who have no other housing option shouldn't be held strictly accountable for
the conduct of their relatives or guests.

Opponents of the policy suggested Tuesday that most of the people who get
evicted are no less law-abiding than the tenants it is intended to protect.

"There is nothing to distinguish Pearlie Rucker from the people Mr.
Lafayette talked about, except that her daughter was involved in something
she shouldn't have been involved in," said Kirsten Livingston, an attorney
with the New York-based Brennan Center for Law and Justice. "There is a
limit to what one can do to control one's grown child."

Livingston, who wrote a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of
public-housing advocacy groups in the case, said the court's decision
leaves tenants dependent on the discretionary decision-making of public
housing authorities. The decision permits public housing authorities to
enforce "one strike and you're out" but doesn't require them to do so in
every case.

Thus, officials may still be lenient where people are clearly not to blame,
she said.

In fact, Oakland officials eventually permitted Rucker to remain in her
apartment after her daughter had been removed, and, with her, the potential
for drug use in the Rucker household.

The vote in the case was 8-0. Justice Stephen Breyer didn't take part in
the case.