Pubdate: Fri, 28 Jun 2002
Source: Pensacola News Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2002 The Pensacola News Journal
Contact:  http://www.pensacolanewsjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1675
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)

HIGH COURT'S DRUG RULING WON'T AFFECT LOCAL SCHOOLS

Top administrators of the area's two local public school systems say they 
do not believe the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows random drug 
testing among public school students will have an effect here.

Escambia County Schools Superintendent Jim Paul and Santa Rosa County 
Superintendent John Rogers said they're not sure how a random drug-testing 
system would work, what purpose it would serve or how much it would cost.

Both counties conduct random drug tests on athletes.

"I'm not sure if I like that," Paul said of the idea to randomly test 
students. "I don't think I would recommend doing it."

Rogers said he would need to study the issue before deciding whether it 
would be useful in Santa Rosa County.

"That's something that I and the School Board would have to give some 
serious consideration to," he said.

In Thursday's ruling in Washington, the highest court in the land put 
public high school students on notice: Drug tests might be required for 
playing chess or joining the cheerleader squad.

Justices ruled, 5-4, that schools' interest in ridding their campuses of 
drugs outweighs students' rights to privacy, allowing the broadest drug 
testing yet of young people whom authorities have no particular reason to 
suspect of wrongdoing.

The decision gives school leaders a free hand to test students who 
participate in competitive after-school activities or teams - more than 
half the estimated 14 million American high school students.

Drug tests had been allowed previously just for student athletes.

"We find that testing students who participate in extracurricular 
activities is a reasonably effective means of addressing the school 
district's legitimate concerns in preventing, deterring and detecting drug 
use," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for himself, Chief Justice William H. 
Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.

The court stopped short of allowing random tests for any student, but 
several justices have indicated they are interested in answering that 
question at some point.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a dissent, said the "program upheld today 
is not reasonable, it is capricious, even perverse."

The court ruled against a former Oklahoma high school honor student who 
competed on an academic quiz team and sang in the choir. Lindsay Earls, a 
self-described "goody two-shoes," tested negative but sued over what she 
called a humiliating and accusatory policy. She said Thursday was "a sad 
day for students in America."

"I find it very disappointing that the court would find it reasonable to 
drug-test students when all the experts, from pediatricians to teachers, 
say that drug testing is counterproductive," said Graham Boyd, director of 
drug policy litigation at the American Civil Liberties Union and Earls' lawyer.

"The best way to prevent drug use is to involve them in extracurricular 
activities," Boyd said.

Justice Stephen Breyer, who provided the crucial fifth vote for the ruling, 
wrote separately to say that he hopes the testing reduces peer pressure and 
"addresses a serious national problem."

"It offers the adolescent a nonthreatening reason to decline his friend's 
drug-use invitations, namely that he intends to play baseball, participate 
in debate, join the band or engage in any one of a half-dozen useful, 
interesting and important activities," he wrote.

The ruling is a follow-up to a 1995 case, in which the Supreme Court 
allowed random urine tests for student athletes. In that case, the court 
found that the school had a pervasive drug problem and that athletes were 
among the users. The court also found that athletes had less expectation of 
privacy.

Thomas said students who "participate in competitive extracurricular 
activities voluntarily subject themselves to many of the same intrusions on 
their privacy as do athletes."

Ginsburg, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and 
David Souter, said extracurricular activities should not be discouraged. 
They "serve students of all manner: the modest and shy along with the bold 
and uninhibited," Ginsburg wrote.

The Bush administration backed the school system in rural Tecumseh, Okla., 
which had considered testing all students, then settled on testing only 
those involved in competitive extracurricular activities on the theory that 
by voluntarily representing the school, those students had a lower 
expectation of privacy than did students at large.

Earls argued that the Oklahoma school board could not show that drugs were 
a big problem at Tecumseh High School. She claimed the "suspicionless" drug 
tests violated the Constitution's guarantee against unreasonable searches.

"This decision came close to saying that students shed their Fourth 
Amendment rights at the schoolhouse gate," said Jamin Raskin, a 
constitutional law professor at American University. "Each time the court 
erodes civil liberties in public schools, it makes the environment a 
harsher one. Students get the message they're second-class citizens."

Many schools installed drug testing programs for athletes after the 1995 
ruling, but wider drug testing remains relatively rare among the nation's 
15,500 public school districts.

U.S. Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., said the court's ruling should drive an 
expansion of testing nationwide and will not hurt the privacy of students. 
The testing "is only burdensome on those who want to waste their lives 
getting high," he said.

The ruling disappointed such groups as Students for Sensible Drug Policy.

"After-school programs are the best way to keep kids off drugs and off the 
street," said Shawn Heller, a recent college graduate who's the group's 
national director. "Being part of the band or the student newspaper gives a 
kid something to do."

The Tecumseh testing program ran for part of two school years, beginning in 
1998. It was suspended after Earls and another student sued.

The case is Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of 
Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 01-332.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager