June 27,
2002
Supreme Court OK's Random Drug Testing in Public High Schools
Today the United States Supreme Court ruled
that students in public high schools can be forced to submit to random
drug tests as a prerequisite to participating in any after-school
activities. The 5-4 decision held that a student’s right to privacy must
give way to a school’s interest in detecting and preventing drug use
among its students.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose
dissenting opinion was joined by Justices Stevens, O’Connor and Souter,
harshly condemned the expansion of random student drug testing as
“unreasonable, capricious and even "perverse,” noting that it
targets for testing a student population least likely to be at risk for
illicit drugs.
Calling attention to the cognitive liberty
implications of the majority’s decision, Justice Ginsburg pointed out
that the government, by its random drug testing policy, was teaching by
example and the lesson was that the Constitution’s promises of
individual freedom were simply lip service. Ginsburg ended her opinion
with a chilling quote from an earlier decision by the Court: “That
[schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous
protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to
strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important
principles of our government as mere platitudes.”
Resources:
CCLE drug testing resources: http://www.cognitiveliberty.org/issues/drug_testing_index.htm
Supreme Court’s opinion in:
Board
of Ed. of Independent School Dist. No. 92 of Pottawatomie Cty. v. Earls
New York Times Story about the Earls case: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Scotus-Drug-Tests.html
Washington Post Story about the Earls case:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54482-2002Jun27.html
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