TOP COURT LETS STAND A CURFEW ON MINORS

WASHINGTON - Handling two disputes over the rights of teenagers and
parents, the Supreme Court on Monday allowed a city to continue
imposing a nighttime curfew but barred two high schools from requiring
drug tests for all students suspended for disciplinary reasons.

The justices left intact a curfew for minors under 17 in
Charlottesville, Va., and rejected Indiana school officials' effort to
have their drug-testing policy reinstated.

The two actions were not decisions, set no precedents and did not
preclude the possibility that the justices someday might choose to
study each issue more closely.

A nighttime curfew for minors, now employed by many American
communities, never has been fully reviewed by the nation's highest
court. Monday's action may encourage other communities to consider
adopting similar ordinances.

The court's denial of review in the Indiana case, meanwhile, is likely
only to confuse the already murky legal status of student
drug-testing.

Lawyers for the Anderson Community School Corp. had sought to revive
at two Anderson high schools a drug-testing policy they called vital
to "deterring drug and alcohol use among students."

A federal appeals court struck down the 1997 policy, ruling that
suspended students cannot be required to take a urine test before
being reinstated unless they are individually suspected of using drugs
or alcohol.

The Supreme Court in 1995 ruled in an Oregon case that random drug
tests for student athletes don't violate the Constitution's 4th
Amendment protection against unreasonable searches.

Last October, the justices rejected a challenge to a policy used by
another Indiana school district, in rural Rush County, that requires
random drug testing for all students who participate in
extracurricular activities.

But no court ever has condoned the random testing of all public school
students.

In striking down the drug-testing policy in Anderson, a three-judge
panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals drew a distinction
between it and those involved in the Oregon and Rush County cases.

The Charlottesville curfew controversy stemmed from the City Council's
1996 vote to impose curfew hours--midnight to 5 a.m. weekdays and 1
a.m. to 5 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays--for anyone under 17.

A group of teens and their parents had sued, contending the curfew
violated their rights.

They said that it "deprives parents of their historically fundamental
right to direct the rearing of their children" and unjustifiably
"discriminates against minors in matters of fundamental freedoms."