SUPREME COURT JUSTICES ENDORSE TEEN DRUG TESTS

WASHINGTON -- Several Supreme Court justices embraced the idea of random
drug tests for students involved in after-school activities ranging from
band to chess club, a major step toward allowing drug testing for all students.

A lawyer for a rural Oklahoma school district argued Tuesday that random
drug tests for some students was a reasonable response to a general problem
of drug use among young people.

If the court agrees, it would allow far broader scrutiny of the majority of
the nation's 24 million high school students who participate in
extracurricular activities.

"Do you think any school in the United States does not have a drug
problem?" Justice Antonin Scalia asked rhetorically at one point.

"The danger is getting kids used to the drug culture," he said. "They're
forming their habits for the rest of their lives."

The court has already ruled that schools may test athletes for drugs. That
1995 ruling made an exception to the general rule that authorities must
have some specific reason to suspect wrongdoing before targeting someone
for search.

The court found that the school in the first 1995 case had a widespread
drug problem, and student athletes were among the users. Students who
routinely strip naked in a locker room have a lower expectation of privacy
than other students, the court reasoned then. Students who used drugs while
playing vigorous sports could also be a danger to themselves or others, the
court said.

Justice Stephen Breyer suggested the Oklahoma school district took the
logical next step in light of the earlier ruling. Breyer voted with the
majority to approve athlete testing, and he noted on Tuesday, "It's hard
for me to see if I came out one way (then) I'd come out different here."

The court's ruling in the current case, expected by summer, should fill in
a major question left from the 1995 ruling: whether the factors that made
drug testing acceptable for athletes apply to other after-school
activities, or even students at large.

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. It was
suspended after Lindsey Earls, captain of the school academic quiz team and
self-described "goodie two-shoes," sued over a 1998 drug test. She passed
the test.

"The constitutional rights of a lot of students are at stake here," Earls
said after Tuesday's oral argument session. "My biggest fear is there will
be students drug tested all over, students whose privacy is invaded," said
Earls, now a freshman at Dartmouth College.