COURT WIDENS DRUG TESTS FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

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 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 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."

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.

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 that 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 leading congressional proponent of school drug testing predicted that
school districts will see the court's ruling as a "green light." "Until
today, the American Civil Liberties Union has been able to hold out the
threat of a lawsuit and scare school boards out of implementing drug
testing," Rep. John Peterson, R-Pa., said. "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."

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."

Ginsburg had joined the court's 1995 decision allowing drug testing of
athletes, but she wrote Thursday that she viewed the earlier case as
premised on its special circumstances, such as the danger of playing sports
under the influence of drugs and the pervasiveness of the drug problem in a
specific school.