SUPREME COURT DODGES APPEAL ON DRUG TESTING

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal from
an S.C. hospital in a decade-old lawsuit over whether police should be
given the results of hospital drug tests on pregnant women.

The Supreme Court ruled two years ago the tests, once given at the Medical
University of South Carolina in Charleston, violated Fourth Amendment
protections against unreasonable search and seizure. Some women who tested
positive for drugs were arrested from their beds shortly after giving birth.

The case now will return to a federal district court in Charleston, where a
jury will consider damages.

The Medical University of South Carolina had asked the Supreme Court to
again consider the issue of whether the women knew their urine was being
screened for drugs as part of a 1989 policy designed to stop the drug epidemic.

The justices declined.