School drug tests widen with 5-4 court decision

The U.S. Supreme Court put public high school students on notice Thursday: Drug tests may be required for playing chess or joining the pompom team.

Justices ruled 5-4 that schools' interest in ridding their campuses of drugs outweighs students' right 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. Previously these tests had been allowed only 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.

Not necessarily needed

Local school officials say the ruling doesn't mean students in Southeast Missouri are going to start being tested in the fall.

Cape Girardeau and Jackson, Mo., school district superintendents Mark Bowles and Ron Anderson say the testing may be appropriate in some school districts throughout the country, but it's not necessary in their Southeast Missouri schools.

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.

"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 Earls' attorney Graham Boyd, who is also the director of drug policy litigation at the American Civil Liberties Union. "The best way to prevent drug use is to involve them in extracurricular activities."

Bowles said some people might view the testing as policing of students, but he sees it as helping children who are involved in dangerous activities.

"We don't want to pretend there is no problem in Cape," Bowles said. "But in school districts like Cape Girardeau, there may be better, informal ways of doing things. When we see a problem we talk with parents, which is, by far, the most effective means of trying to reach out to kids."

Anderson agreed, saying his district seeks out parents first, too.

The Pottawatomie County school system in Oklahoma had considered testing all students. Instead, it settled for 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.

Logical step

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 in dissent for herself and justices John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter.

In a brief, separate dissent, O'Connor and 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 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.

Pottawatomie educators, backed by the Bush administration, argued that any drug problem is a concern. Also, the school said, the drug tests were a deterrent for students who knew they could not participate in favorite activities unless they stayed clean.

Numerous 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. Lower courts have reached differing conclusions about the practice.

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

The Tecumseh policy covered a range of voluntary clubs and sports, including the Future Farmers of America club, cheerleading and football. Students were tested at the beginning of the school year. Thereafter, tests were random.

Overall, 505 high school students were tested for drug use. Three students, all of them athletes, tested positive.

A federal appeals court ruled against the program, saying it took the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling too far. Sports are different from other extracurricular activities, the lower court said, and the school had not done enough to show that students who participated in those activities were abusing drugs.

The case is Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 01-332.

Staff writer Heather Kronmueller contributed to this story.