ACLU TO SUE OKLAHOMA SCHOOL DISTRICT OVER STUDENT DRUG TESTING

In a pointed challenge to a policy adopted by an increasing number of the
nation's high schools, the American Civil Liberties Union said yesterday
that it would file suit Tuesday against an Oklahoma school district that has
administered drug tests to students who want to participate in
extracurricular activities like the debate team, chorus and Future Farmers
of America.

Though the Supreme Court refused last year, without comment, to hear a
challenge to a drug-test requirement for after-school programs at an
Indiana high school, the A.C.L.U. contends that the Tecumseh School
District in Oklahoma has gone a critical step further: many
extracurricular activities are tied to courses in the regular school
day.

Thus, according to the A.C.L.U. and the two teen-age plaintiffs it is
representing, anyone at Tecumseh High School who refuses to submit to
the urine test required for the choir, for example, would have to drop
the accompanying music course, which provides a credit for graduation.
And that, the civil liberties union argues, is a violation of a
student's right to a public education, as well as of the Fourth
Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure.

In a sign of how contentious the issue has become, the five-member
Tecumseh school board voted last night at a special meeting to suspend
the policy through Monday, when it meets next, to study its options.
But the civil liberties union said it would still file suit Tuesday.
Graham Boyd, a lawyer for the National Drug Policy Litigation Project
at the organization, wrote in the complaint that by targeting
"students who are relatively unlikely to use drugs" and who are
participating in activities with "no physical danger," the district
was not addressing a "proven problem." In filing a complaint in
Federal District Court in Oklahoma City against Tecumseh, the school
district of a rural town about 45 miles to the southeast, the
organization says it is trying to check a rash of tests for illegal
substances that while largely accepted when applied to athletes have
recently been applied to students in more cerebral pursuits.
Individual school districts in Idaho, North Carolina and Wyoming,
among other states, have implemented similar policies for
cheerleaders, language club members and chess competitors in the last
year, while other districts in Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida are
considering expanding such testing to nonathletes.

Proponents argue that an extracurricular activity is a privilege, not
a right, and should be open only to those who are demonstrably drug-
and alcohol-free.

"School districts get blamed for a lot of different things," said
Linda Meoli, a lawyer representing the Oklahoma district.
"Unfortunately, we have to be policemen, we have to be psychologists,
we have to be parents, and educators are far down the list. Some
school districts feel like they have to take a proactive role in
keeping children safe."

But Lindsay Earls, 16, one of the two plaintiffs in the Oklahoma case,
says the policy is less about safety than a humiliating invasion into
students' lives. On Jan. 12, Lindsay said in an interview, she was
pulled out of a choral rehearsal in the middle of the school day and
escorted to the girls' restroom. There, she said, a monitor stood
guard outside a stall while she filled a cup with urine.

Lindsay said that while she opposed the test philosophically, she
consented because she could not bear being dropped from the choir. "I
would have been out of my activities, which is unacceptable to me,"
she said. As in other districts -- including Winston-Salem/Forsyth in
North Carolina, and smaller localities like Campbell County, Wyo., and
Council, Idaho -- the policy in Tecumseh applies to illegal drugs like
alcohol, marijuana and amphetamines as well as "performance-enhancing
drugs." Though the testing was random last year, when the policy
began, students were told to present urine samples before joining
activities this year, Lindsay said. The superintendent of schools
referred questions to Ms. Meoli, the district lawyer, who refused to
answer any questions about the policy's implementation or test results.

Though the policy says no student will be subject to "academic
sanctions," Lindsay said she knew of several students who had dropped
out of the choir, and its related academic course, after refusing a
drug test. In that respect, the Oklahoma district's policy breaks with
that of Rush County, Ind., the district whose policy was challenged as
high as the Supreme Court last year, having been upheld by the United
States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago.

In Rush County, a district 45 minutes southeast of Indianapolis,
students who fail the drug test -- or decline to take it -- are barred
from after-school activities and concerts, as well as driving to
school, but can keep any course credits by sitting in with the band or
debate team during meetings in the regular school day.

Ed Lyskowinski, the superintendent in Rush County, said 30 of the 250
high school students tested last year came up positive for tobacco,
which is barred by the policy, and 1 student tested positive for
marijuana. "We adopted this policy," Lyskowinski said, "so students
could say on Friday night, 'I don't want to drink, I don't want to
smoke, because next week I want to participate in an athletic contest
or whatever extracurricular activity, or drive to school.' "

Because the Supreme Court declined to take up the Rush County policy,
it is unclear how firm a precedent it will prove to be.

The Rush County program goes considerably beyond a policy on student
drug testing that the Supreme Court upheld in 1995, in an Oregon case
that applied only to student athletes. In that case, the Court found
that an existing drug problem and the role of athletes as student
leaders justified the policy.

For Daniel James, 16, the other plaintiff, the drug policy has put him
in a predicament, making him choose between what he says are his
rights and his place on the school's academic team, which competes in
statewide quiz competitions, activities he knows are valued by
university admissions officers. "This just really interferes with my
academic goals," he said, "to go to a competitive college and not some
slacker college."