SIDES IN CASE PRESENT ARGUMENTS

LOCKNEY - The dueling sides in the lawsuit against the Lockney
schools' drug-testing policy responded to each other's motion for
summary judgment last week, lawyers said.

No new revelations came to light as the American Civil Liberties
Union and the Lockney Independent School District wait on a ruling
that could keep the case from going to trial. The responses allowed
each side to dispute the other's so-called "finding of facts,"
lawyers said.

Both sides presented their arguments for having the case settled in a
bench ruling by Judge Sam R. Cummings in U.S. District Court,
Northern District, in Lubbock.

The case hinges on if, in fact, seventh-grader Brady Tannahill's
Constitutional rights would be violated if forced to comply with the
school's drug-testing program.

Lockney ISD lawyer Don Henslee in Austin says no.

"We say there was a drug problem," he said. "It (the drug testing
policy) does nothing that violates any rights, plus there's the fact
that children in school have a diminished expectation of privacy."

ACLU attorney Michael Linz in Dallas disagrees.

"The primary question is the nature and degree (of a drug problem),
if there is any drug problem in Lockney, Texas," he said. "The
defendants would say that Lockney, Texas, is the proverbial drug
capital. Lockney's drug problems are not significant."

The ACLU sued the Lockney Independent School District in March,
asking the court to declare that Lockney's drug-testing policy is
illegal. It said Brady Tannahill, a sixth-grader at the time, was
deprived of "his right to be free from unreasonable search and
seizure as guaranteed to him by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments
to the U.S. Constitution."

Tannahill's father, Larry Tannahill, refused to sign a permission
slip for the drug-testing, citing privacy concerns.

The Lockney school district approved a mandatory drug-testing policy
for all students in November 1999 after two years of debate, Lockney
ISD superintendent Raymond Lusk said in a previous interview.

Community response was positive, and the policy was implemented in
February, Lusk said previously. It required every student from sixth
to 12th grade, teachers and staff members be tested.

Lockney ISD recently revised its drug-testing policy to include just
seventh-through 12th-grade students.

Students not returning a signed permission slip will only be subject
to drug counseling, not put into in-school suspension or barred from
extracurricular activities.