Broader Drug-Testing Programs Approved
by: Daniel Riehs
WASHINGTON—A recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision allowed public schools to subject students in extracurricular activities to mandatory, unprovoked drug tests. While schools have tested the purity of athletes' steroids for years, this decision marks the first time that non-athletes have been required to have their drugs tested by school officials.
"We find that testing the stashes of students who participate in extracurricular activities is a reasonably effective means of addressing the school district's legitimate concern over the use of inferior drugs," wrote Justice Clarence Thomas. Included with him in the majority were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Dennis DeYoung, the former lead singer of Styx.
A major issue in the case was whether or not drug testing violated students' privacy rights. Liz Pearl, a former student in an Oklahoma high school, stated that authorities had no reason to suspect her of cutting her heroin supply with baking sugar when they demanded a sample for a lab assessment.
Pearl, now a freshman at Dartmouth College, was required to be tested to participate in extracurricular activities at her rural school in Tecumseh, Oklahoma. With the help of the ACLU, The Complete Idiots Guide to Defending Your Civil Rights, and her idealistic, naive outlook on life; Earls claimed that such unsubstantiated drug tests violated her Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches or seizures.
Writing for the dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote, "The particular testing program upheld today is not reasonable. It is capricious, even perverse." She went on to add, "This decision reminds me of a foul-smelling pile of horse excrement—fouling up our country with its foul-smelling smelly smell."
School administrators argued that the use of second-rate drugs was a persistent problem among high school students. While there was no particular reason to suspect student debaters, bassoon players, or Harry-Potter-Club Grand-Master Wizard Kings, the school claimed that the random drug tests were a deterrent. They also reminded reporters that student safety was their number-one motivation.
"Just last year," said Stephanie Tiller, a guidance councilor from the Oklahoma school, "Our program uncovered a student who had been mixing little pieces of green construction paper with his marijuana. If these tests can help just one student . . . I'm sorry there's just so much emotion involved."
Pearl's lawyers countered by stating that of the nearly 600 students whose drugs had been tested in Tecumseh, only three stashes, all from athletes, tested positive for unacceptable levels of filler materials. The program, which ran for two years, was suspended after Pearl's initial suit.
The case is Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County vs. Pearl.
« Back (Volume 1, Issue 6)
[Current Issue]
