SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS RANDOM DRUG TESTS FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN
AFTER-SCHOOL ACTIVITIES

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court approved random drug tests for many
public high school students Thursday, ruling that schools' interest in
ridding their campuses of drugs outweighs an individual's right to privacy.

The 5-4 decision would allow the broadest drug testing the court has yet
permitted for young people whom authorities have no particular reason to
suspect of wrongdoing. It applies to students who join competitive
after-school activities or teams, a category that includes many if not most
middle-school and high-school students.

Previously these tests had been allowed only for student athletes.

"We find that 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," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for himself, Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.

The court stopped short of allowing random tests for any student, whether
or not involved in extracurricular activities, but several justices have
indicated they are interested in answering that question at some point.

The court ruled against a former Oklahoma high school honor student who
competed on an academic quiz team and sang in the choir. Lindsay Earls, a
self-described "goodie two-shoes," tested negative but sued over what she
called a humiliating and accusatory policy.

"I find it very disappointing that the court would find it reasonable to
drug-test students when all the experts, from pediatricians to teachers,
say that drug testing is counterproductive," said Graham Boyd, director of
drug policy litigation at the American Civil Liberties Union and Earls' lawyer.

"The best way to prevent drug use is to involve them in extracurricular
activities," Boyd said.

The Pottawatomie County school system had considered testing all students.
Instead, it settled for testing only those involved in competitive
extracurricular activities on the theory that by voluntarily representing
the school, those students had a lower expectation of privacy than did
students at large.

"We are not opposed to drug tests, but when we have situations where they
are done in a suspicionless situation, we believe that is an invasion of
privacy," said Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association.
"If there is suspicion of drug use, that is quite another story, but in
this case it was not."

The NEA filed a brief opposing the Oklahoma testing.

The ruling is a follow-up to a 1995 case, in which the court allowed random
urine tests for student athletes. In that case, the court found that the
school had a pervasive drug problem and that athletes were among the users.
The court also found that athletes had less expectation of privacy.

Thursday's ruling is the logical next step, the Oklahoma school and its
backers said, and the court majority agreed.

"The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is
capricious, even perverse," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent
for herself and Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David
Souter.

In a brief, separate dissent, O'Connor and Souter said they disagreed with
the court's ruling in 1995 and disagree now.

Of the estimated 14 million American high school students, better than 50
percent probably participate in some form of organized after-school
activity, educators say. The trend is toward ever greater extracurricular
participation, largely because colleges consider it a factor in admissions.

Earls argued that the Oklahoma school board could not show that drugs were
a big problem at Tecumseh High School. She claimed the "suspicionless" drug
tests violated the Constitution's guarantee against unreasonable searches.

Pottawatomie educators, backed by the Bush administration, argued that any
drug problem is a concern. Also, the school said, the drug tests were a
deterrent for students who knew they could not participate in favorite
activities unless they stayed clean.

During oral arguments in the case in March, a Bush administration lawyer
said universal testing would be constitutional, apparently the
administration's first such declaration.

Numerous schools installed drug testing programs for athletes after the
1995 ruling, but wider drug testing remains relatively rare among the
nation's 15,500 public school districts. Lower courts have reached
differing conclusions about the practice.

The Tecumseh testing program ran for part of two school years, beginning in
1998. It was suspended after Earls and another student sued. Earls is now a
student at Dartmouth College.

The Tecumseh policy covered a range of voluntary clubs and sports,
including the Future Farmers of America club, cheerleading and football.
Students were tested at the beginning of the school year. Thereafter, tests
were random.

Overall, 505 high school students were tested for drug use. Three students,
all of them athletes, tested positive.

A federal appeals court ruled against the program, saying it took the
Supreme Court's 1995 ruling too far. Sports are different from other
extracurricular activities, the lower court said, and the school had not
done enough to show that students who participated in those activities were
abusing drugs.

The case is Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of
Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 01-332.

On the Net: Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov Appeals court
ruling: http://www.uscourts.gov/links.html and click on 10th Circuit.