FEDERAL JUDGE FREEZES, BLASTS TEACHER DRUG TESTING POLICY

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A federal judge halted the Kanawha County school
system's plan to randomly drug test teachers.

U.S. District Judge Joseph Robert Goodwin said the drug testing plan
would force teachers to submit to an unconstitutional and unjustified
search. He also gave a scathing rebuke of the policy and the school
board that approved it.

Goodwin said the Kanawha school system's plan to randomly test 25
percent of its teachers and other school personnel each year was made
even though it does not appear that there is a pervasive drug problem
in the county.

He said that the school board's argument that something bad could
happen while a teacher under the influence of drugs was supervising
children was based on an unreasonable kind of worse-case-scenario
thinking. Goodwin asked why the board had not also passed a policy
to randomly test teachers for tropical diseases.

"Total security for us and our children is only possible - if
unlikely - in a totalitarian state," Goodwin said.

He added, "Who wants to live in a society when a government will stop
at nothing to prevent bumps and bruises."

The policy, approved by a 4-1 school board vote in October, was to
take effect Jan. 1. Board members were warned ahead of time that the
county was in for a costly, nasty legal battle if they approved the
testing plan. The board, citing pressure from voters and with an eye
to the drug testing programs used by private companies, decided to go
ahead with the policy.

The West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers took
the first legal action against the school board last month in county
circuit court. The case was moved to federal court. Since then, the
West Virginia Education Association has joined with AFT-WV to fight
the policy.

The school board also has supporters, including the Kanawha County
Commission and the Fayette County school board.

The Kanawha county case could be an important decision on what
privacy rights government employees have and what opportunities
government employers have to monitor employees' out-of-work activity.

The school board says that teachers hold safety sensitive jobs and
that if they are on drugs, their inability to correctly supervise a
classroom can put students in danger.

The teachers' organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union
argue that teachers' are not like other safety sensitive government
employees -- including bus drivers, police officers and workers at
nuclear plants -- and that the school board's policy is unnecessarily
intrusive.