THERE'S ONE LAW FOR THE RICH, ANOTHER FOR POOR

If you're poor and your kid is caught with drugs, you don't deserve a
home.

So said the U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday. By an 8-to-0 vote.

Notice the justices didn't say if you're rich and your kid is caught
with drugs, you don't deserve a home.

Or if you're middle class.

Or if you happen to be the governor of Florida, and your daughter is
busted for fraudulently obtaining a controlled substance that is
popular in the club scene.

No, if your offspring is still at home and is caught with drugs and
you have money in the bank, you don't have to worry about the
government kicking you out of your home.

Pearlie Rucker, on the other hand, has to worry.

Since 1985, Rucker, who is in her mid-60s, has lived in public housing
in Oakland, Calif., with her middle-aged daughter, Gelinda, who,
because of a chronic mental disability, can't live on her own.

Five years ago, Gelinda was drinking in public about three blocks from
home when an officer arrested her for public drunkenness. On her
person police found a rock of cocaine and a drug pipe. Callous
inflexibility Because of Gelinda's crime, the Oakland housing
authority, understandably concerned about renting to people
participating in illicit drug activity, moved to evict her.

But that wasn't enough for the housing authority in this age of
knee-jerk zero tolerance. It decided to evict Gelinda's mother, too.

Never mind that Rucker warned her daughter that drug use or criminal
activity could get them evicted. Never mind that Rucker routinely
searched her daughter's room for evidence of drugs. Never mind that
Rucker never found any drugs or drug paraphernalia in Gelinda's room.

Three blocks away from home, Gelinda got caught with a piece of crack,
and because of that the housing authority had every right, according
to the Supreme Court, to tell Gelinda's mother to get out.

In his opinion, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said he sees
nothing "absurd" about this.

"Absurd" isn't exactly the word I'd use, either. "Unconscionable" is
more like it.

Consider what Rucker's housing choices were. An Oakland newspaper, The
East Bay Express, reported in 1998 that the city's rental vacancy rate
was about 2 percent, with the average rent at $791 per month, up 10
percent over 18 months.

What were the chances of Rucker finding a private apartment with an
affordable rent and room for her daughter, her daughter's two
daughters and another granddaughter? Failed policy It's safe to say
Rucker didn't choose to live in a housing project. It was either
public housing or homelessness.

To get into public housing, Rucker had to sign a lease stating she
would be subject to eviction if she, a member of her household or a
guest engaged in illegal drug activity.

So what could Rucker do? She had three choices. First, she could have
decided the lease was impossibly strict and moved her family into a
homeless shelter. Second, she could have moved into an efficiency and
let her family fend for itself.

Rucker took the third choice: She accepted responsibility for her
family. She signed the lease and tried to keep her household free of
drugs. That she failed in this regard is little different than the
failure of Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and his wife to keep their
daughter, Noelle, off drugs.

What's different is that only Rucker, and impoverished parents like
her, stand to lose their homes for their children's failings.

Rehnquist thinks it's reasonable for Congress to permit zero-tolerance
evictions in public housing because, he wrote, drugs lead to murders,
muggings and other forms of violence against tenants.

Wrong. Drug prohibition leads to murders, muggings and other forms of
violence.

Rucker's eviction is one more example of how drug prohibition is a
failed policy, one that feeds organized crime, turns inner-city
neighborhoods into combat zones, makes criminals out of treatable
substance abusers and threatens our civil liberties.

Now even the Supreme Court thinks it's more important to be tough on
drugs than to show compassion to a poor, innocent grandmother who
tried to do the right thing for her family and now is being shown the
street.