COURT GOES TOO FAR ON DRUG-TESTING

At a time when it is common for public schools to use metal detectors,
search lockers and drug-test athletes, it may not seem like that big a
stretch to subject all students to random drug-testing. It certainly wasn't
for the U.S. Supreme Court in upholding an Oklahoma school district's right
to require students to submit to the random tests before they can engage in
extracurricular activities involving competition with other schools.
Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas asserted the "custodial"
responsibilities of schools to protect students.

But just look at the students who have been drafted for this kind of
protection: members of the school band and choir, the chess club, the
future homemakers club, the Future Farmers of America. If it makes sense to
require random drug tests of student athletes, who are under all kinds of
pressure to take performance-enhancing drugs, it makes no sense to target
kids who are walking advertisements for the straight and narrow. Dissenting
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was right in calling the ruling "capricious,
even perverse." And even less outwardly upright students are shielded from
these outrageous invasions of privacy by the Fourth Amendment's bar of
unreasonable searches and seizures. In saying that students who join the
clubs have "limited expectations of privacy," Thomas seems to have had
quite another society in mind.

The next thing you know, all pretense of "random" will be dropped and all
students will be tested, door to door, so their parents can share in the
"custodial" duties. But of course to come up with the money needed for the
tests, participating schools might have to shut down the glee club, the
sewing club and other choice targets.