SUPREME COURT ACTIONS AFFECT TEENS

High Court: Curfew For Children Is Let Stand And Schools' Drug-Testing
Policy Is Denied..

Washington-Handling two disputes over the rights of teen-agers 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 Charlottesville, Va., curfew for children under
17 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 may choose to study each issue
more closely.

A nighttime curfew for minors, now employed by many communities, has never
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.

Test results had been disclosed only to parents and a designated school
official, and had not been used for additional punishment.

James R. Willis II was a freshman at Highland High School when he was
suspended for five days in December 1997 for fighting. The school official
to whom Willis was taken right after his fight later testified that there
was no indication he had been using drugs or alcohol.

Willis refused to take the required drug test for readmission, and, with his
father, sued the school district. Monday's action sealed their legal victory.

The Supreme Court in 1995 ruled in an Oregon case that random drug tests for
student athletes do not violate the Constitution's Fourth Amendment
protection against unreasonable searches. That ruling emphasized the "role
model" effect of student athletes' drug use but also noted the importance of
"deterring drug use by our nation's schoolchildren."

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 has ever 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.

Also Monday, the Supreme Court:

Rejected a challenge to the federal Violence Against Women Act filed by the
first woman convicted under the law. Rita Gluzman of New Jersey was
sentenced to life in prison for her husband's murder in 1996. She argued
that Congress exceeded its power to control interstate commerce by making it
a crime to cross state lines to harm a spouse or intimate partner.

Agreed to decide whether prosecutors violate defendants' rights by implying
that their presence at trial lets them hear other witnesses and tailor their
own testimony to fit the evidence. Prosecutors in a New York case say such
comments to a jury do not burden defendants' constitutional right to be
present at trial and confront the witnesses against them.

Agreed to decide whether Hawaii may limit by race the voters who elect a
nine-member board that oversees a program benefiting only residents who are
ethnic Hawaiians. A white resident of Hawaii says the state law
discriminates against him.

Ruled in an Ohio case that states do not violate the Constitution when they
cancel the right of public university professors to negotiate workload rules
as part of their union contracts.