RANDOM DRUG TESTING GETS JUSTICES' APPROVAL

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 5-4, the court ruled 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 that noted the special safety risks and
lower expectation of privacy inherent in sports, as well as the fact that
athletes are role models for other students.

But, writing for the majority Thursday, Justice Clarence Thomas made clear
the court had a much broader rationale in mind -- the schools'
quasi-parental role with regard to their young charges.

"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."

Under the Tecumseh, Okla., policy at issue Thursday, students can neither
be prosecuted nor expelled from school. For that reason, 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 in many school
districts, and, under legislation signed by President Bush last year, $472
million in federal funding is available to pay for it.

A leading congressional proponent of school drug testing predicted that
school districts will see the court's ruling as a green light.

"Until today, the ACLU has been able to hold out the threat of a lawsuit
and scare school boards out of implementing drug testing," said Rep. John
Peterson, R-Pa.

"With this Supreme Court decision, and with funding now available to
schools ... school boards across the country can begin to make our schools
safer for every child.

"We need to see positive results from increased testing and then move
forward on it."

But others suggested the impact could be limited, noting that only a few
school districts have taken advantage of the authority they already have to
test athletes and that federal support can only partially offset the high
cost of testing.

"The authority is now there to go beyond simply athletes and extend testing
to all students in extracurriculars," said Edwin Darden, senior staff
attorney for the National School Boards Association, which supported the
Tecumseh school board. "The likelihood is that some will use it. But it's
not going to be a huge shift."

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul
Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter, wrote that "the particular
testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is capricious, even
perverse: (It) targets for testing a student population least likely to be
at risk for illicit drugs and their damaging effects."