WASHINGTON (AP) -- Public schools nationwide may be encouraged to require
more students to take drug tests after the Supreme Court allowed an Indiana
district to continue such tests.

Rejecting an appeal by teen-agers 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
Monday 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 -- Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. And it may
entice educators in other states to expand drug testing.

But Julie Hunter Wood, the National School Boards Association's general
counsel, discounted such a development. ``I would not expect a wave of new
drug-testing programs in the public schools,'' she said. ``Most schools
approach this issue as one of prevention, not detection, and I expect they
will continue such diligent efforts.''

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 that 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.''

In other cases Monday, the Supreme Court:

- --Agreed to use the case of a Guatemala man living in California to clarify
when some aliens can be deported, despite fears they would be persecuted in
their home country.

- --Rejected an appeal aimed at forcing a Minnesota church to return the
$13,450 in donations it received from a couple within a year of their
seeking federal bankruptcy protection.

- --Said it will decide in a Texas case how difficult it should be for
disabled workers to sue employers over alleged discrimination after they
apply for or receive Social Security disability benefits.

- --Left intact rulings denying the news media access to federal court
proceedings and documents related to a grand jury's investigation of
President Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

© Copyright 1998 The Associated Press

Checked-by: Richard Lake