COURT TO CONSIDER SCHOOL DRUG-TESTING

Students sued after Okla. district required urine tests for extracurricular
activities

WASHINGTON -- One of the most pressing questions for parents and educators
comes before the U.S. Supreme Court today as the justices consider how far
schools can go in trying to keep students off of drugs.

An Oklahoma school district is defending a policy of random urine testing
for high school students who want to join the marching band, academic team
or any competitive extracurricular activity.

The students and parents who object, represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union, say testing those who have done nothing to arouse
suspicion is unconstitutional and can backfire.

"I don't think stripping students of their privacy rights is any way to
solve the problem," says Lindsay Earls, who with her sister and another
student challenged the urinalysis testing in the Pottawatomie County school
district, 40 miles southeast of Oklahoma City.

With illegal drug use prevalent across America, the case has drawn wide
interest from teachers, parents and social workers. Many of them disagree
over whether testing is an effective way to keep students from using narcotics.

The justices' eventual ruling will have ramifications for the most
aggressive anti-drug efforts in schools today and likely influence the
legitimacy of other government-sponsored urine testing down the line.

The Bush administration's Justice Department is siding with the school
district. In a brief to the high court, Justice Department lawyers refer to
a 2000 national survey in which 54% of 12th-graders and 46% of 10th-graders
said they had used illegal drugs.

"Schoolchildren not only are more vulnerable to drug use than adults, but
such abuse is much more likely to devastate their lives," U.S. Solicitor
General Theodore Olson says in the brief.

But the question in oral arguments today is whether such broad-based
testing, covering all students in interscholastic extracurricular
activities, violates the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable
searches.

In previous cases, the Supreme Court has said the collection and testing of
urine is a type of search that under usual circumstances would require a
warrant or some evidence of wrongdoing.

But the justices also have ruled that administrators generally have more
leeway to search in the school setting, based on the assumption that
students expect less privacy than adults do.

In a case in 1995, the court specifically allowed urinalysis for student
athletes. In that case from Vernonia, Ore., the high court cited the safety
concerns involved in athletics and noted that athletes usually undress
together and have lower expectations of privacy.

Now the question is whether schools can justify testing non-athletes,
particularly those with no documented drug problems.

The Pottawatomie County School Board began requiring students who wanted to
participate in interscholastic competitions to undergo random urinalysis
testing in 1998. Each month, a teacher would accompany students into a
bathroom and wait outside the stall to try to guard against cheating.

Earls, then a sophomore at Tecumseh High, submitted to the tests in order
to continue participating in the school's choir and academic team. In a
recent interview, she said it was "humiliating" to urinate as a teacher
listened outside the stall. "We all tried to make jokes about it to feel
more comfortable," she said.

Her tests were negative. Earls says she has never used drugs. Even so, she
and her parents decided to challenge the policy because of the personal
liberties at stake. "It's nobody's business but my parents' if I'm doing
drugs," says Earls, 19, now a freshman at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

A trial judge sided with the school district, citing students' presumed
lower expectation of privacy. The judge said the collection of the urine
minimally affects them. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit
reversed that ruling. Referring to the 1995 Oregon case, the appeals court
said athletes face a higher risk of injury from drug use than others and
concluded that testing could be used only if "there is some identifiable
drug abuse problem" to screen for.

The Pottawatomie County school district says students who take part in
non-athletic competitions "voluntarily choose to abide by heightened
regulations" and automatically "submit to additional privacy intrusions."

School officials say the need to eliminate drug use outweighs privacy
interests. William Bleakley, an attorney for the district, says officials
see testing as a "caring approach" that gets students into counseling if
they need it.

ACLU lawyer Graham Boyd, representing the students, counters that there is
no justification for testing non-athletes who have no history of drug use
or discipline problems and who do not engage in dangerous sports.

He says that participating in choir, band and similar activities can help
keep kids off drugs and that schools should not discourage such pursuits.