SCHOOL DRUG TESTS AND STUDENT RIGHTS

The fact that children aren't allowed to vote, drive, drink, etc., doesn't
mean they have no rights at all. Certainly, adults shouldn't abuse them
physically or otherwise. And children have a right to expect their parents'
love and all that goes with it, including food, shelter and moral nurturing.

That said, we found ourselves reassured by the overall good sense on the
subject of children's rights that emanated from the nation's highest court
this week.

In a case argued before the Supreme Court over drug tests for students,
several justices strongly suggested they don't have a problem with broad
intrusions into students' personal lives - whether by testing for drugs or
screening for weapons - even absent specific suspicions about individuals.

The case involved a sophomore choir singer at a rural Oklahoma high school
who had objected to the mandatory urine tests that came with participation
in extracurricular activities.

Sweeping aside the student's lawyers' concerns about the need for
"individualized suspicion" - some evidence the student to be tested is
under the influence or uses controlled substances - before a school can
test for drugs, several justices made clear that the Fourth Amendment's bar
on unreasonable searches and seizures simply doesn't apply to those in the
custody of the school system.

"You are dealing with minors here," said Justice Antonin Scalia. "There's a
world of difference between minors and adults."

Justice Scalia said school officials make the rules at school, and he
derided the notion that students have privacy rights.

Justice Stephen Breyer compared drug testing to metal detectors at school
doors. Justice Anthony Kennedy joined in with a ringing denunciation of the
"drug culture" and speculated that most parents support policies such as
screening kids for drug use.

We find their views heartening - not because we endorse the nostrums
employed by the school in the case before the court, but because there is
an underlying wisdom in reaffirming the "world of difference" between
minors and adults.

Granted, there's much overkill and just plain silliness, all too often
politically motivated, to be found in the "zero tolerance" policies
embraced by school boards around the country. Though there are
understandable worries about violence and drug use among teens and even
pre-teens, many of the responses are overwrought and unreasonable.

What the court seemed to be saying, though, is that the way to file the
rough edges off such overreaching policies is through parents interacting
with their elected school board members. Which is to say these debates
aren't really constitutional fodder for the courts as much as they are
policy matters for representative government to sort out.

When most of us entrust our minors to the daily oversight of public
schools, we extend to those schools the authority to ensure that our kids
are safe, disciplined and, of course, educated. As a result, students don't
get exclusive access to their lockers, and they may even be asked to file
through metal detectors every morning and then provide a urine specimen
before joining the football team.

Whether those policies make sense under the circumstances in any given
locale is for that community, not the courts, to figure out.