Pubdate: 23 Mar 1999
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 1999 The Washington Post Company
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Author: Joan Biskupic

COURT REFUSES TO REVIEW GUIDELINES ON SCHOOL DRUG CHECKS

Lower Court Ruling Barring Urine Testing in Student Discipline Cases Left
in Place

For the second time in five months, the Supreme Court yesterday rejected
pleas from school officials seeking help in determining under what
circumstances it is constitutional to test students for the use of illegal
drugs.

The court has now left in place two rulings that send mixed signals
regarding the use of random student drug testing, at a time when schools
increasingly are trying to cope with drug abuse and violence in all grades.

By refusing to take the latest case, the justices left intact a lower court
decision in an Indiana school dispute that said forcing suspended students
to submit to urine testing before they can return to school violates their
privacy rights.

Last October the high court let stand a lower court decision allowing
another Indiana school district to require students to submit to urinalysis
if they participate in any extracurricular activity, from football to the
library club.

"Teachers are no longer concerned about students chewing gum in the
classrooms or shooting spitwads," the Indiana School Boards Association and
other state educators told the justices in a brief, urging them to take the
new case. "They must now be concerned with children smoking crack and
shooting high-powered rifles."

To steer students away from drugs, schools across the country have
instituted urine testing under an array of policies affecting many
thousands of children. But such efforts, particularly when used randomly on
students not suspected of drug use, invoke Fourth Amendment protections
against unreasonable searches.

The last time the high court considered the constitutionality of student
drug testing was 1995, when it ruled that public schools could require
students who play sports to undergo random drug tests. The 6 to 3 opinion
emphasized not only that schoolchildren do not have the rights of adults,
but that student athletes are entitled to less privacy than other students
because they often undress and shower together.

Subsequently, numerous districts have expanded their policies for students
involved in a range of after-school activities, as well as those in
disciplinary trouble.

Graham Boyd, counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union project on drug
policy litigation, said yesterday that some school districts were
emboldened by the high court's October action refusing to intervene in the
policy requiring all students in Rush County, Ind., schools to take drug
tests as a condition of participating in extracurricular programs. Numerous
challenges brought by students and their parents are boiling up in state
and federal courts, he said.

Two years ago the Anderson Community School Corp. in Indiana began
requiring high school students caught fighting or otherwise misbehaving and
suspended for three days or more to provide a urine sample. The idea was to
ensure that students in trouble were not under the influence of illegal drugs.

High school freshman James R. Willis II was suspended for five days for
fighting and was asked to submit a urine sample when he returned to school.
But Willis refused and, with his father, sued the school district claiming
the police violated his right to be free of unreasonable searches.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit agreed, distinguishing the
Anderson Community school policy from one that applied only to students who
have voluntarily chosen to play sports or engage in other extracurriculars.
In Willis's case, the court said, he had not surrendered any of his privacy
rights.

School district lawyer Robert M. Baker III said yesterday that the district
believed the policy would help deter drug abuse among the most troubled
students and that, until the appeals court struck it down last year, other
districts were considering it as a model approach. The case is Anderson
Community School Corp. v. Willis.

In a day of varied court business, the justices also:

Ruled by 8 to 1 that Ohio could require public university professors to
spend more time in the classroom and exempt the requirement from the
regular collective bargaining process. The Ohio law stemmed from the
legislature's belief that professors were devoting too much time to their
own academic research and not enough to teaching students.

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down the policy as a violation of equal
protection of the laws because professors were the only public employees
who could not bargain over a new work requirement. Reversing in Central
State University v. American Association of University Professors, the high
court said the classroom requirement "was an entirely rational step" to
getting faculty to spend more time on their teaching responsibilities.

Agreed to decide whether Hawaii may allow only descendants of native
Hawaiians to vote in elections for trustees of a program that specifically
benefits residents with Hawaiian blood. A white rancher born in Hawaii
sued, claiming the requirement was unconstitutional race discrimination.
The case, Rice v. Cayetano, will be heard in the fall term.

Denied an appeal from a New Jersey woman who said her conviction under the
1994 Violence Against Women Act was unconstitutional. Rita Gluzman was
prosecuted for allegedly inducing her cousin to murder with an ax Gluzman's
husband, under gender-neutral language of the federal law protecting men as
well as women. Gluzman argued that the interstate domestic violence
provision intrudes on traditional state authority. The justices rejected
the appeal in Gluzman v. United States without comment. 
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