Justices rule that drug fight outweighs privacy concerns.
WASHINGTON, June 27, 2002 – The Supreme Court ruled that public school officials can require random drug testing of students who want to take part in extracurricular activities. The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and the plaintiffs in the case at issue, two students from Tecumseh, Okla., said that those who want to join the choir or other after-school activities should not be forced to give up their privacy, but a five-justice majority rejected that argument.
“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.
LIMITED IN SCOPE
The court stopped short of allowing random tests for any student, whether or not involved in extracurricular activities, but several justices have indicated they are interested in answering that question at some point.
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 “goodie two-shoes,” tested negative but sued over what she called a humiliating and accusatory policy.
The Pottawatomie County school system had considered testing all students. Instead, it settled for testing only those involved in extracurricular activities on the theory that by voluntarily representing the school, those students had a lower expectation of privacy than did students at large.
During oral arguments before the court on March 19, Justice Kennedy indicated he might vote to uphold the searches, suggesting that any student who was offended by the idea of a search and did not support the school district’s anti-drug policy could simply choose not to take part in the extracurricular activity.
“That’s their choice,” Kennedy said.
EXPANDS 1995 DECISION
The ruling is a follow-up to a 1995 case, in which the 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.
Thursday’s ruling is the logical next step, the Oklahoma school and its backers said, and the court majority agreed.
“The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable, it is capricious, even perverse,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the dissenters.
In a brief, separate dissent, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter said they disagreed with the court’s ruling in 1995 and disagree now.
Of the estimated 14 million American high school students, better than 50 percent probably participate in some form of organized after-school activity, educators say. The trend is toward ever greater extracurricular participation, largely because colleges consider it a factor in admissions.
Earls and the American Civil Liberties Union 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 Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches.