HIGH COURT REJECTS PROPOSAL TO EXPAND SCHOOL DRUG TESTS

The Supreme Court yesterday refused to consider expanding public high
schools' authority to test for illegal drug use.

The justices, who have allowed testing of students for voluntary
extracurricular activities, refused to permit an Indiana district to
require urine tests for students returning to class after suspensions
of three days or more.

In another case, the court ruled 8-1 that college professors do not
have a constitutional right to negotiate rules on how to apportion
their working time between teaching and research.

The unsigned opinion, with Justice John Paul Stevens dissenting,
upheld as "entirely rational" an Ohio law to ensure that professors
spend more time in the classroom.

In setting up their agenda for the term that begins in October,
justices agreed to decide whether states may exclude voters by race
from a special election.

The Hawaii case tests the constitutionality of restricting voting on a
program benefiting those of Hawaiian blood solely to those descended
from islanders living in Hawaii before 1778, when Capt. James Cook
arrived with the first Europeans.

Another case accepted for the last term of the year will test a
prosecutor's right to tell the jury that the defendant had an edge
because he testified after hearing what everyone else said.

Ray Agard of New York appealed his conviction and 10- to 20-year
sentence for sodomy and weapons possession on the grounds that a
prosecutor said, "You get to sit here and think, `What am I going to
say? . . . How am I going to fit it into the evidence?' "

Without comment or explanation, the justices also:

* Refused to hear the Cult Awareness Network's appeal from a 1995
federal court order in Seattle to pay $1,875,000 to Jason Scott, who
claimed his civil rights were violated during a five-day kidnapping to
"deprogram" him of United Pentecostal beliefs.

* Left standing Rita Gluzman's life sentence for her husband's 1996
murder. She argued the sentence was unconstitutional because the
federal Violence Against Women Act intrudes on states' rights.
Gluzman, who lived in New Jersey was convicted of murdering her
husband, biologist Yakov Gluzman, in Pearl River, N.Y. She was the
first woman convicted under the 1994 law making it a crime to cross
state lines to injure, harass or intimidate a spouse or intimate partner.

The issue seems headed back to the justices, however, because the 4th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond ruled this month that the
provision giving rape and domestic violence victims the right to sue
in federal court is unconstitutional.

* Freed Motorola Inc. from having to defend against a class-action
lawsuit charging the second-largest U.S. maker of cellular phones
deceived customers about radiation exposure. The court's rejection of
an appeal by cell phone user Frank J. Schiffner of Illinois left
standing a decision that shelters wireless phone companies from
traditional state law claims.

By refusing to review the drug-testing case brought by James R. Willis
II from Anderson, Ind., the court set no national precedent but left
in force a decision by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that
student privacy rights preclude intrusive testing.

That ruling is binding only in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin, the
states of the 7th Circuit.

School lawyers called the tests vital to "deterring drug and alcohol
use among students." Mr. Willis was a freshman at Highland High School
when he was suspended five days in December 1997 for fighting.

In the 1995 Vernonia, Ore., case, justices ruled 6-3 that random drug
tests for student athletes do not violate Fourth Amendment protection
against unreasonable searches.

In October, the high court let schools in Rush County, Ind., continue
conducting random drug testing for students participating in
extracurricular activities.