Supreme Court Upholds High School Drug Testing
June 27, 2002 at 3:26 PM EDT
A closely-divided court ruled 5 to 4 that the ability of schools to rid their campuses of illegal drugs outweighs an individual’s right to privacy. The decision allows schools to test students who participate in any competitive after-school programs for drug use, even without any particular suspicion of wrongdoing.
Previously, only student athletes were required to submit to drug testing due to a 1995 Supreme Court ruling that athletes had less of an expectation for privacy and schools had a right to investigate potential drug abuse problems.
The ruling came in the case of an Oklahoma high school student who competed on an academic quiz team and sang in the school choir. Lindsay Earls tested negative for drug use but sued over a testing policy she found humiliating and accusatory.
“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 in a majority opinion for himself, Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the testing program was “not reasonable, it is capricious, even perverse,” in a dissent for herself and Justice John Paul Stevens. Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter filed a brief, separate dissent. | 
