DRUG LAW RULING

Justices Wrongly Choose Eviction Over Innocence

In a cold-hearted ruling last week, the U.S. Supreme Court OK'd kicking
senior citizens out of their homes for crimes they did not commit or know
about.

The unanimous decision -- upholding a drug law that allows families to be
evicted from federally subsidized housing if any family member or guest is
involved with narcotics -- means innocent residents are now vulnerable to
arbitrary housing authorities along with drug dealers.

The opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist declared the eviction
policies a reasonable application of Congress' desire to end "the reign of
terror" in public housing.

Drugs have been a scourge in too many housing projects. But the court
twisted the intent of the law. Its objective was to improve the lives of
innocent public-housing residents, not destroy them.

No one is safer because a 63-year-old great-grandmother and her family are
tossed out in the street after her daughter is caught possessing cocaine --
three blocks from her apartment. Housing-complex residents aren't safer when
a 79-year-old man with a disability is kicked out because his full-time
health-care worker brings drug paraphernalia into the apartment. But those
are the test cases on which the high court ruled.

The court could have met Congress' goal of ridding public housing of drug
dealers by writing a narrow decision that would make only those people
convicted of drug charges eligible for eviction. Instead, it chose to punish
innocents and violate the due process it should uphold.