COURT BACKS DRUG TESTING OF STUDENTS

WASHINGTON - Public schools that want to require students to take drug tests
may find some encouragement in a Supreme Court action Monday that allowed an
Indiana district to continue such tests. Rejecting an appeal by teenagers
and their parents on Monday, the court let a rural school district conduct
random drug tests for all students in extracurricular activities - from
sports teams to the library club - even if they are not individually
suspected of using drugs.

The justices, acting without comment, left intact a federal appeals court
ruling that said such testing does not violate students' privacy rights.

Starting its 1998-99 term with a flurry of paperwork, the court issued
orders in more than 1,600 cases. It granted full review to just six.

Outside the stately courthouse, more than 1,000 members of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People noisily demonstrated to
protest the court's lack of minority law clerks. NAACP President Kweisi
Mfume and 18 other people were arrested for trying to demonstrate on court
property rather than on the public sidewalk.

The court's action in the drug-testing case is not a decision and therefore
sets no national precedent. But it left in place a ruling that remains
binding law in three states - Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin. And it could
entice educators in other states to expand drug testing.

The National School Boards Association says it has no hard numbers, but
believes very few school districts require testing of students, according to
spokesman Jay Butler.

Julie Hunter Wood, the group's general counsel, said she would not expect a
wave of new drug-testing programs. "Most schools approach this issue as one
of prevention, not detection," she said.

In 1995, the justices voted 6-3 to uphold random drug tests for student
athletes, citing both their "role model" status among peers and the
importance of "deterring drug use by our nation's schoolchildren."

Monday's action does not preclude the possibility the highest court will
someday spell out more definitively the bounds of permissible drug testing.

Rush County High School in rural Indiana adopted its drug-testing program in
1996 even though there was little evidence of drug use among its students.
The program bars students from all extracurricular activities - sports
teams, library club, Future Homemakers of America and the like - unless they
and their parents or guardians consent to random urinalysis tests.

The testing is conducted by a service in a vehicle parked on school grounds.

If a student tests positive, his or her family can explain the result by,
for example, showing that the student is taking certain prescription
medicine. Absent such proof, the student is suspended from all
extracurricular activities until passing a new test.

The program was challenged by Matthew Todd's parents when he was a freshman
working as a volunteer who videotaped the football team. Matthew's parents
refused to consent to the drug testing and Matthew, now a junior, was barred
from his volunteer work.

Steve and Gina Hammons also refused to let their three children be tested.
Two had been members of the library club and Future Farmers of America. Only
a daughter, Jennifer, now a senior, remains at the high school.

The Todds and Hammonses sued, but a federal trial judge upheld the drug
testing.

A three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, stating
that "successful extracurricular activities require healthy students."

The appeals court panel ruled that the program was "sufficiently similar" to
an Oregon school district's drug-testing of student athletes that the
Supreme Court had condoned in 1995.

The parents asked the full 7th Circuit court to consider the case, but were
denied. The dissenting judges said the panel's decision "takes us a long way
toward condoning drug testing in the general school population."

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst