Pubdate: Sat, 23 Mar 2002
Source: Palm Beach Post (FL)
Copyright: 2002 The Palm Beach Post
Contact:  http://www.gopbi.com/partners/pbpost/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/333
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/youth.htm (Youth)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

STRIPPING STUDENT RIGHTS

Anyone who has seen Reefer Madness might have wondered Monday whether some 
Supreme Court justices were recreating scenes.

The over-the-top 1936 anti-drug film recommended that anyone using 
marijuana be considered mentally ill. The issue before the court this week 
was whether a school district near Oklahoma City could maintain a policy of 
mandatory random drug tests for any high school student taking part in 
interscholastic competition, from the football team to the choir, even if 
there was no suspicion of drug use.

When Lindsay Earls was a student at Tecumseh High School, she was on the 
band, two choirs and the Academic Team. She challenged the policy on the 
grounds that it violated her Fourth Amendment protection against 
unreasonable search. The trial court upheld the policy, but an appellate 
court reversed the decision.

Ms. Earls passed her drug test and is a freshman at Dartmouth College. Yet 
Justice Anthony Kennedy belittled not only the lawsuit but Ms. Earls and 
her family. "No parent would send their child to a 'druggie' school, except 
perhaps your client," Justice Kennedy fumed to Ms. Earls' attorney. Not 
only was he out of line, he was off the mark in assuming that drug use 
would be rampant at schools that didn't enact such policies.

In 1995, the court ruled that an Oregon school district could require drug 
tests for extracurricular activities. Writing for the majority, Justice 
Antonin Scalia said testing was necessary to avoid "getting used to a drug 
culture." That's a long and dubious legal stretch, but at least in that 
case there was suspicion of a serious drug problem with athletes as the 
culprits.

As legal scholars have noted, courts for more than a decade have been 
stripping away minors' constitutional rights. Still, the students at 
Tecumseh High are not train engineers who deliver hazardous material, so 
there is no public-safety issue. Nor is the district seeking, for example, 
to test athletes for performance-enhancing drugs that could be harmful to 
them. Absent probable cause, the drug tests amount to an illegal search and 
a lesson to children that constitutional rights are negotiable.

Besides, there are better ways to respond. This week, the St. Lucie County 
Sheriff's Office arrested 16 students at Port St. Lucie and Centennial high 
schools on drug charges. The school district asked for help because it had 
something Justice Kennedy didn't seem to consider important: evidence. The 
sting operation caught the guilty without involving the innocent. What a 
concept.
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