SUPREME COURT: DRUG TESTS OK FOR STUDENT ACTIVITIES

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court gave its approval Thursday to the random
drug testing of public high-school students in extracurricular activities,
a ruling that increases the tools available to some 14,700 public school
systems to fight illegal drug use. By a vote of 5 to 4, the court ruled
that local school officials' responsibility for the health and safety of
their students can outweigh those students' concerns about privacy.
Therefore, mandatory drug testing of students in activities such as band,
Future Farmers of America and chess does not violate the constitutional
prohibition on "unreasonable" searches, the court said.

The court had already authorized mandatory random drug testing for
student-athletes in a 1995 case.

Writing for the majority Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear the
court had the schools' quasi-parental role with regard to their young
charges in mind.

"A student's privacy interest is limited in a public school environment
where the state is responsible for maintaining discipline, health and
safety," Thomas wrote. "Schoolchildren are routinely required to submit to
physical examinations and vaccinations against disease. Securing order in
the school environment sometimes requires that students be subjected to
greater controls than those appropriate for adults."

Given that, under the Tecumseh, Okla., policy at issue Thursday, students
can neither be prosecuted nor expelled from school, Thomas wrote, the
privacy invasion is "not significant," whereas "the nationwide drug
epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in every school."

Thomas was joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin
Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.

The decision could encourage more school districts to try policies similar
to the one in rural Tecumseh, which school authorities instituted in 1998.
Under that policy, students who refuse to take the test, or test positive
more than twice, face banishment from extracurricular activities for the
rest of the school year.

Lindsey Earls, a former student at Tecumseh High School who is now an
undergraduate at Dartmouth College, had challenged the policy in federal
court, saying her constitutional rights were violated when, as a condition
of participating in a competitive singing group, teachers required her to
urinate into a cup while they listened nearby to prevent cheating.

A federal judge in Oklahoma sided with the school authorities, but the
Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit agreed with Earls,
who was aided in the case by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union.

Testing students for drug use is popular among parents and, under
legislation signed by President Bush last year, $472 million is available
to pay for it.