School district policy requiring drug testing for all students participating in competitive extracurricular activities is constitutional

Law Reporter, Sep 2002

School district policy requiring drug testing for all students participating in competitive extracurricular activities is constitutional.

Board of Educ. of Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 92 v. Earls, 122 S. Ct. 2559 (2002).

The U.S. Supreme Court held that a school district policy that requires all students participating in competitive extracurricular activities to submit to drug testing is a reasonable means of preventing and deterring drug use among schoolchildren and, therefore, does not violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.

Here, two high school students and their parents sued a school district, alleging that defendant's policy requiring that all middle and high school students participating in school-sanctioned competitive extracurricular activities submit to urinalysis testing for drug use violated the Fourth Amendment. The trial court granted defendant summary judgment, citing Vcrnonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995), which upheld suspicionless drug testing of student athletes. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, finding that a school district could not impose a suspicionless drug testing policy unless it showed an identifiable drug abuse problem among a sufficient number of those subjected to testing and that testing the group would actually redress the problem. Because defendant had failed to demonstrate a drug problem within the relevant group, the Tenth Circuit found the policy unconstitutional.

Reversing the Tenth Circuit, the Court found that the reasonableness of a search must be determined by balancing the nature of the intrusion on the individual's privacy against the promotion of legitimate governmental interests. With respect to the privacy interest here, the Court said the reasonableness of searches in a school setting must be evaluated in light of the special needs that inhere in the school context. Specifically, the Court noted that students are committed to the temporary custody of schools, which are responsible for maintaining discipline, health, and safety. Citing Vernonia, the Court explained that in such a setting students have a limited privacy interest and that securing order in school at times requires that students be subjected to greater control than would be appropriate for adults.

The Court rejected plaintiffs' contention that students here had a higher expectation of privacy than the athletes in Vernonia because these students were not subjected to regular physicals and communal undress. While finding that this distinction was not essential to the holding in Vernonia-which depended primarily on the school's custodial responsibility and authority-the Court said that students participating in competitive extracurricular activities also voluntarily subjected themselves to intrusions on their privacy. Specifically, the Court noted that these activities are governed by rules established by a state activities association and that a faculty sponsor monitors student compliance with various rules applicable to the activities.

The Court also found that the testing here was only minimally intrusive, noting that students provided the urine sampies from inside a closed stall while being monitored by a faculty member outside the stall. Further, the policy required that test results be kept confidential and separate from other student files and released to school personnel only on a "need to know" basis. In addition, the Court explained that the results were not turned over to law enforcement authorities and did not lead to discipline or academic consequences.

The Court also said that the government's interest in addressing student drug use justified the policy. The Court explained that the drug-related health and safety risks identified in Vernonia applied with equal force to the school district's children here and that defendant had presented specific evidence of drug use in its schools sufficient to shore up the need for its drug testing program. Adding that it was not necessary for defendant to show a particularized or pervasive drug problem to justify the program, the Court said the need to prevent and deter the substantial harm of childhood drug use provided the necessary immediacy for a drug testing policy.