THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, ACLU LAWSUIT FINDS

Our view: A suit filed by two honor students and their parents against
the Shasta Union High School District holds good news about school
drug use.

The cost of litigation alone makes an American Civil Liberties Union
lawsuit against a local school district about as welcome as two weeks
of detention.

A suit challenging the Shasta Union High School District's new
drug-testing policy, however, actually contains some good news.
Namely, district students' rates of drug and alcohol use are not all
that bad.

The lawsuit says the district itself claimed otherwise in its
application for federal money to expand drug testing. Administrators
lumped together students' reported use of drugs and alcohol and then
compared that figure with national averages for drugs alone, say the
ACLU's lawyers, who represent two Enterprise High School honor
students and their parents.

"Thus, when the District claims in its application that: 'District
results are higher than national statistics at every grade level for
both lifetime and 30 day drug use,' this is flatly untrue," the
lawsuit states.

If the ACLU is correct, the district was either sloppy or deliberately
fudged the numbers to make the school look worse and, thus, by the
logic of government grants, more worthy of help. Either way, that's no
example for the kids.

But does the case have any legal merit?

The district carefully crafted its testing policy to comply with a
2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed a similar program in
Oklahoma. Only students who participate in extracurricular activities
are tested, and the regime aims not to punish students who test
positive but to steer them into counseling.

The ACLU, though, claims that the policy violates the state
constitution's privacy protections, which are more strict than the
U.S. Constitution's. State laws are also more protective of the rights
of students. And the federal Supreme Court only barely approved random
testing of all students in extracurricular activities - as opposed to
athletes, where the health concerns are clear - on a 5-4 vote. The
district's drug-testing could well fail to pass muster in California's
courts.

The school board and administrators only want to protect the students'
health and safety in a world with all too many dangerous temptations,
but following the law when they do it isn't too much to ask.

Our view: A suit filed by two honor students and their parents against
the Shasta Union High School District holds good news about school
drug use.