Editorial

WITHOUT SUSPICION - STATE JUSTICES WISELY RULE AGAINST BROAD DRUG TESTS

Hurrah for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. While the war on drugs in
America has helped pave the proverbial road to hell with good intentions --
and even the U.S. Supreme Court has blinked at civil rights violations
flowing from anti-drug fervor -- Pennsylvania's top court has offered a
ruling full of good sense.

In a preliminary phase of a case, a three-justice panel ruled Nov. 20 that
"suspicion-less" drug testing in high schools in the commonwealth was a
problem under the state constitution, even though the U.S. Supreme Court
has ruled such searches constitutional under the Fourth Amendment.

The ruling was confirmation that, in Pennsylvania, a stronger notion of
privacy prevails in the law. It also served to illustrate what was wrong
with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year in a similar case. An
opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, ever the reactionary, rejected
an exemplary student's objection to having been tested for drugs as a
condition of belonging to the National Honor Society and the school choir.

The Pennsylvania case rivaled the federal case in its absurdity. Standing
common sense on its head, the Delaware Valley School District in Pike
County instituted an overly broad drug and alcohol testing program for
"student leaders" -- those involved in extracurricular programs -- as well
as athletes and students who drove to school. Meanwhile, the slackers, the
very ones who might be supposed to be using drugs or alcohol, were not
included in the program.

As the opinion by Justice Ronald D. Castille noted, "Nothing in this
statement of purpose, or in any other pleading of record, suggests that the
class of students targeted for random testing were the source of an
existing, active drug problem in the district." It appeared, Justice
Castille wrote, that certain students were "targeted for symbolic reasons,
since they were deemed to be 'role models.' "

So that is what it has come to in the war on drugs -- role models singled
out for attention in the name of a better educational environment, and
this, moreover, in the absence of convincing evidence that a drug problem
existed in the district at all. One might call this strange policy the
Revenge on the Nerds, because simply being in the chess club would open a
student for testing.

This is indeed good intentions gone awry. The school district's fault was
not in trying to address drug use, as Justice Castille fully acknowledged
in his opinion. The problem was that the school district went too far. It
forgot that it is in the business of teaching citizenship.

As Justice Castille wisely put it, "What lesson does a program targeting
the personal privacy of some but not all students, and lacking both
individualized suspicion or any reasoned basis for a suspicion-less search,
teach our young?"

Although this case is still in a preliminary stage and awaits further court
action, the obvious answer to Justice Castille's question needs to be
considered by more districts in Pennsylvania than the one in Pike County.