STUDENTS CAN BE TESTED FOR DRUGS, JUSTICES RULE

WASHINGTON - Emphasizing that public schools must maintain "discipline,
health and safety," the Supreme Court on Thursday approved the random drug
testing of any student involved in extracurricular activities.

In a 5-4 decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court said schools
have an important interest in deterring drug use and protecting students
from the dangers of abuse. Those concerns, it said, justify any intrusion
into the students' privacy.

The decision expanded a 1995 ruling that allowed schools confronted with
serious drug problems to randomly test athletes in junior high and high
school. That decision marked the first time the court had allowed school
officials to give drug tests to students who were not suspected of
wrongdoing, despite the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and
seizures.

"Testing students who participate in extracurricular activities is a
reasonably effective means of addressing the school district's legitimate
concerns in preventing, deterring and detecting drug use," Thomas wrote for
the court.

The ruling produced a sharp dissent by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had
joined the majority in the 1995 case. In switching sides on the issue of
broader testing, she said she saw a "dispositive difference" between testing
athletes, who could face sports-related injuries through drug use, and
testing students in choir or band.

"The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is
capricious, even perverse," Ginsburg wrote. "[The] policy targets for
testing a student population least likely to be at risk from illicit drugs
and their damaging effects."

Civil liberties groups also sharply criticized the decision, which they said
would lead to precisely the opposite result sought by the school district in
Tecumseh, Okla., where the case originated.

"Every available study demonstrates that the single best way to prevent drug
use among students is to engage them in extra-curricular activities," said
Graham Boyd, director of the Drug Policy Litigation Project at the American
Civil Liberties Union. "The court has now endorsed school policies setting
up barriers to these positive activities."

But educational officials praised the decision, saying it gave public
schools another tool to create a safer environment for children.

"It is crucial that local school boards be able to exercise their own good
judgment about what strategies to use to fight drug use in their schools,"
said Mossi White, president of the National School Boards Association.

Though the justices divided 5-4, they did not break along traditional
conservative-liberal lines. Justice Stephen Breyer, who also supported
testing of athletes in 1995, again joined the majority Thursday to provide
the critical vote arguing that the broader testing was reasonable under the
Fourth Amendment. Breyer generally has been much less protective of Fourth
Amendment rights than his liberal colleagues.

Joining Ginsburg in dissent were Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, John Paul
Stevens and David Souter. The case arose when the local school district in
Tecumseh sought to expand on the drug policy beyond just testing athletes.
Other school districts across the country had begun to react similarly, with
mixed results in the lower courts.

A federal appeals court in Chicago, for example, ruled in 1998 that testing
students in extracurricular activities was constitutional. The Supreme Court
declined to review that case, making the practice acceptable in Illinois,
Indiana and Wisconsin. The appeals court has jurisdiction over those states.

But a federal appeals court in Denver last year struck down the Tecumseh
policy under the 4th Amendment. It sided with students who said that
refusing to take the test would keep them out of school activities, like
choir and the marching band.

With the split in the lower courts, the Supreme Court decided to take the
case. In its ruling Thursday, the court balanced the students' privacy
interests against the schools' concern with protecting students from the
dangers of drugs.

The court emphasized that the students were entitled to less protection
under the Fourth Amendment than adults were because the school was acting in
the place of the parent.

"A student's privacy interest is limited in a public school environment
where the state is responsible for maintaining discipline, health and
safety," the court said, noting that schoolchildren routinely are required
to get physical examinations and vaccinations against disease.

Moreover, the invasion of privacy, the court said, is minimal. Urine samples
were discreetly collected, the court said, and the results were not turned
over to law enforcement authorities.

In a separate concurring opinion, Breyer said "not everyone would agree"
that giving a urine sample raised a "negligible" privacy concern. But he
noted that in public meetings, parents had not objected to the proposed
testing program.

Lindsay Earls, one of the students who fought the policy, said Thursday she
was "really sad" that other students "might have to go through a humiliating
urine test like I did just to join the choir or debate team."

In Illinois, despite approval from the federal appeals court in 1998, the
majority of school districts do not use random drug tests, said Steven
Rittenmeyer, a Western Illinois University professor who co-authored two
surveys on school drug testing in Illinois.

In an October 2000 survey of 515 Illinois school districts, Rittenmeyer and
his partner found that just 41 districts conducted random student drug
tests. Most of those districts had programs in place solely to test student
athletes, but about half also reported testing students in other
extracurricular activities, he said.