EDITORIAL REMINDS ONE OF MADDOX, WALLACE

Your Sept. 20 editorial, "Drug-testing policy supports local control," is
frighteningly reminiscent of Lester Maddox and George Wallace pledging
their undying loyalty to the principle of "state's rights."

Jim Crow was nourished by the ideal of local autonomy. Your ill- considered
editorial pits big, centralized government (always bad) against local
community control (always good). The Constitution never enters the discussion.

The five justices who concluded that student drug-testing does not violate
the Fourth Amendment were not supporting the principle of local autonomy.
Their arguments were constitutional.

Local governments are not free to deny fundamental rights, even if
everybody in town agrees that such a denial would be "right for our
community." The Tulia drug sting is a sterling example of local autonomy
unfettered by constitutional constraint.

America is a constitutional democracy. Big government didn't tell Lockney
and Tulia they couldn't drug-test schoolchildren; the brakes were applied
by federal judges Sam Cummins and Mary Lou Robinson.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court justices fumbled the ball on the drug-
testing issue, they, not local officials or "big government," remain the
final arbiters of the permissible.

Alan Bean

Tulia