SEARCH PROTECTION LEADS COURT AGENDA

WASHINGTON--Difficult questions about Americans' constitutional protection
against unreasonable searches -while in their homes, cars and even in
hospital beds -lead the Supreme Court's agenda as the justices begin their
2000/2001 term Monday.

Some observers, however, say the most important day for the nation's highest
court will be election day. The next president will choose the next members
of a court that has been divided 5/4 on some of the nation's most explosive
issues.

The court this term also is confronting a major challenge to the nation's
premier environmental law, the Clean Air Act, and will decide whether people
can sue states to enforce the federal ban on discrimination against the
disabled.

The term that ended in June was a blockbuster. The justices upheld the
Miranda warnings police must give before questioning criminal suspects, let
the Boy Scouts ban homosexual troop leaders and struck down a state's
"partial-birth" abortion law.

They also banned group prayers at public high school football games and
prevented rape victims from suing their attackers in federal courts. The
court last week cleared its plate of the massive Microsoft antitrust dispute
by sending it to a federal appeals court, delaying a final ruling perhaps
for years.

The 47 cases granted review for the new term -with about two dozen more to
be added in coming months -lack the political punch of last year's cases but
still will touch the lives of many ordinary Americans.

"It's already looming as a big year for the Fourth Amendment," which
protects Americans against unreasonable searches and arrests, said Steven
Shapiro of the American Civil Liberties Union.

A case that could affect the nation's 185 million licensed drivers asks
whether police can arrest people for traffic violations punishable only by a
fine. A Texas woman, whose lawyers call her a "typical motorist," says
police went too far when they arrested, handcuffed and jailed her because
she and her children were not wearing seatbelts in the family pickup truck.
Other cases illustrate "the pressure that the war on drugs has exerted on
the Fourth Amendment in particular and the Constitution in general," Shapiro
said.

The justices will decide whether police can set up traffic checkpoints and
stop motorists in hopes of catching people who sell or use illegal drugs.
Police generally need a warrant or a reason to suspect someone of a crime
before detaining them for several minutes, and a lower court ruled that drug
checkpoints by Indianapolis police likely amounted to unreasonable seizures.
But the Supreme Court previously has upheld roadblocks aimed at catching
drunken drivers.

Another war-on-drugs case asks whether public hospitals can test pregnant
patients for drug use and tell police who tested positive. A South Carolina
hospital tested patients' urine without a court warrant, and if the result
were positive, women were arrested for endangering the fetus.

A group of women sued but a federal appeals court upheld the tests, saying
hospitals had a "substantial interest" in seeking to reduce cocaine use by
pregnant women.

A case that was among a dozen granted review last week, when the justices
got a head start on their new term, asks whether police need a search
warrant to use a device to detect heat coming from someone's home. An Oregon
man was charged with growing marijuana after police said a heat-detecting
device showed an unusual amount of heat coming from the roof over his
garage. Still another marijuana-search case involves an Illinois man who was
prevented by police from going inside his home alone until the officers
could get a warrant to search for the drug.

The Clean Air Act dispute could yield a hugely important ruling on
environmental protection that might also limit other federal agencies'
authority to write rules to implement laws passed by Congress.

Industry groups want the Environmental Protection Agency to consider costs,
in addition to health benefits, in setting federal air-quality standards.

The case began as a dispute over the EPA's 1997 standards for reducing smog
and soot.

"The argument is not that we want to turn back the clock" on environmental
protection, said Edward Warren, a lawyer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Instead, he said the issue is "how are we going to do the most with what we
have in solving environmental problems?"

But Frank O'Donnell of the Clean Air Trust called the air-quality standards
"the heart and lungs of the Clean Air Act" and said a Supreme Court win for
industry would mean "more pollution, more health damage for all of us."

The justices might use the disability-bias case to forge ahead with what
some legal scholars call a states' rights revolution -a series of rulings
that have sharply tipped the federal-state balance of governmental power
toward the states. In January the court ruled that state employees cannot go
into federal court to sue over age bias.

Now, the justices have agreed to decide whether state employees can sue in
federal court to enforce the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, a law
that aims to protect the disabled against job bias. The law is perhaps best
known for requiring wheelchair ramps in buildings across the country. The
court's decision could sweep broadly enough to affect all ADA lawsuits filed
against state governments, not just those filed by state employees.