SUIT CHALLENGES SCHOOL'S DRUG TESTS

BALTIMORE (AP) -- A small-town high school is being sued for forcing
18 students rumored to have attended a party where drugs were used to
submit to drug tests, then holding them in an auditorium while the
samples were lined up on the stage and tested.

The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the American Civil Liberties
Union on behalf of students at Eastern Maryland's Easton High School
and their parents, alleges officials at the school violated the Fourth
Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches.

The students were singled out by school officials and told they could
submit to the drug test or face expulsion, according to the lawsuit.

Maryland law authorizes drug testing when officials have reason to
believe a student possesses or has used drugs on school grounds. But
the ACLU says Easton High School officials maintain that students with
a trace of the drugs in their bloodstream are guilty of possessing
drugs on school property.

County School Superintendent Samuel Meek declined to respond to the
charges.

``I believe that our course of action will ultimately prove to be
correct,'' Meek said.

School officials called the 18 students to the auditorium Jan 18,
asked them for urine samples, then had them sit for four to five hours
while school officials obtained permission from their parents, lawyers
for the students contend. Then, they say, a school official lined up
the samples on the stage floor and tested them one by one.

Only one test indicated a presence of drugs. An independent lab tested
that student the following day and found no evidence of drugs, the
lawyers said.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of four students and about two dozen
parents whose children were tested.

``In their zealotry to root out drug users, school officials seem to
have lost sight of their role of educators,'' Denise Nolan, one of the
parents who brought suit, said in a statement released by the ACLU.

Her daughter, Jamie Nolan, who maintains an A average, said she felt
angry and violated by the school's insistence she submit to the testing.

``I did not appreciate that the school took away time during one of
the most important days of the year, when we were having review for
final exams, in order to wrongfully accuse us and make us feel
guilty,'' the 15-year-old said in the statement.