WASHINGTON (Reuter) The Supreme Court struck down Tuesday
a state law requiring that candidates for top political,
legislative and judicial office must pass drug tests before they
can get on the ballot.
The high court, by an 81 vote, declared unconstitutional a
1990 Georgia law mandating drug tests for candidates for
governor, lieutenant governor and other top posts, heads of
several agencies, state judges and state legislators.
The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court has
invalidated a drugtesting requirement, programs which have been
used by the government and private employers across the country
since the mid1980s.
Since 1989, the Supreme Court has upheld drug tests for
studentathlethes, government workers and railroad employees,
mainly out of concern for public safety, but it said the Georgia
law went too far by violating privacy rights.
The ruling represented a setback for Georgia and the Justice
Department, which supported the law that required candidates
submit to the tests.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said for the court majority that
there was no evidence the state had any fear or suspicion of
illegal drug use by elected officials.
``What is left, after close review of Georgia's scheme, is a
state interest not in public safety, but in projecting an image.
Georgia seeks to display to the public its firm commitment to
the struggle against drug abuse,'' she said.
``The need projected ... is symbolic, not actual and
special,'' she said. ``However well meant, the candidate drug
test that Georgia has devised diminishes personal privacy for a
symbol's sake.''
Ginsburg said the constitutional guarantee against
unreasonable searches and seizures of evidence protected
candidates against the urinalysis test at issue.
Under the law, any candidate who declined to take the test
or who tested positive for one of five illegal drugs would be
barred from holding office.
Ginsburg said the law was not well designed to identify drug
users. ``The test date is picked by the candidate, so all but
the uncontrollably addicted could escape detection,'' she said.
She said the Georgia law does not fit within the small
category of constitutionally permissible drug tests that can be
required without individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.
Ginsburg concluded that the drugtesting ruling would not
affect whether states may require medical examinations designed
to provide certification of a candidate's general health or
financial disclosure requirements.
Walker Chandler, a Libertarian Party member who
unsuccessfully ran for lieutenant governor in 1994, was among
those challenging the law, saying it amounted to an improper
expansion of government power for merely symbolic purpose.
Chief Justice William Rehnquist was the lone dissenter,
saying the privacy concerns implicated by the urinalysis test
were ``negligible'' and warning that abuse of illegal drugs had
become ``one of the major problems of our society.''
He said nothing in the Constitution prevents a state from
adopting a law ``whose principal vice is that it may seem
misguided or even silly to members of this court.''

Tell us what you think about the ClariNews! Send your comments
to <> .