Posted on 07/08/2002 11:09:20 PM PDT by JohnHuang2
Liberals and conservatives should be outraged at last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of an Oklahoma school district's mandatory drug testing policy for students involved in extracurricular activities. That 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, was an assault on parental rights. Since drugs were involved, the justices felt free to indulge in judicial activism -- something conservatives such as Thomas are supposed to abhor. There is more anti-drug rhetoric than law in what Thomas wrote.
While hearing arguments on the case, Justice Anthony Kennedy scolded ACLU attorney Graham Boyd, who represented students and parents who objected to the Tecumseh school district policy. Kennedy said that mandatory drug testing should help parents keep their kids out of "the druggie school" -- and no parent would pick such a school "except perhaps your client." Oooph.
Lori Earls -- a medical technician and parent of plaintiff Lindsay Earls -- believes her daughter does not do drugs and does not condone student drug use. She also understands the Constitution (better than Kennedy) and doesn't believe the government should search people without due cause.
She added, "We just believed that they stepped into a realm that took parents' rights away. They took away the parents' job in the home. They put the parents in the position of 'need to know'" -- when it should be the schools that operate on a need-to-know basis.
A little background: In 1995, the Big Bench ruled that an Oregon school could require school athletes to submit to random drug testing. The court explained that the school had a pervasive drug problem, and as athletes were both role models and known offenders, drug use "increased the risk of sports-related injury."
The Tecumseh school district expanded that policy by requiring all students in extracurricular activities to submit to random drug testing. Since students can join or not join clubs, the test isn't mandatory for all students. A positive test reading would require a student to submit to anti-drug counseling. Failure to submit to counseling, three positive tests or a refusal to pee in a cup could lead to suspension from the club or activity.
Attorney Judy Appel of the Drug Policy Alliance's Oakland office noted that the new decision basically threw out the 1995 ruling's carefully crafted criteria for allowing searches without suspicions. "They're taking the role of in loco parentis very seriously," Appel noted, thus making the school a "co-parent."
Appel added, "I read the Thomas decision (as) to indicate a willingness to expand drug testing for all students." She's not stretching. Not when Thomas quotes a ruling that equates schools with children's guardians. Not when Thomas rejects the need for there to be a pervasive drug problem, as he did.
What about parents who object to having their kids drug tested in order to play chess or join Future Farmers of America? "The answer is that your child cannot participate in extracurricular activities," answered Edwin Darden of the National School Board Association, which supported Tecumseh. "It's not negotiable."
So parents have no say in the matter.
This makes no sense. Before, parents were free to drug test their children, if they chose. Now the highest court in the land says that schools have a pre-eminent role in those personal decisions, and parents who want their kids to participate in important extra-curricular activities can't, well, just say no.
Lori Earls told me that the drug-testing policy came about after a mother found her athlete son and friends doing drugs in her home. The mother complained to the school board that the school had to do something.
"She didn't have to address it," Earls noted. "The school had to do something." In that, the policy encourages parents to abrogate their responsibilities.
Tecumseh Assistant Superintendent Danny Jacobs denied that the athlete's mom prompted the policy. "The school board was looking into this policy and they asked me to review it, and it was not based on that one individual's situation, as you described," he said.
The justices and school boards may not see it this way, Lori Earls noted, but the Thomas decision greatly expands a school's "obligation."
If schools can decide to test students without due cause and over the objection of parents, what's to stop the schools from deciding how families deal with their children's drug problems?
Alas, not the Supreme Court.
The schools and all of us will be far better off after the drug users (and this will snare drug pushers) are thrown out of the taxpayer funded schools. Then the "parents" will have to find new more expensive babysitters and a different facility for their coddled drug users to hang out. Keep in mind that not one "clean" kid will be penalized over this. There is a real drug epidemic in this nation and it is about time something is being done about it.
Interesting, how some Freepers will join with the ACLU to protect the drug using crowd.
I agree, and as owner of a wrecker service in the 1990's, found myself in position of being in charge of my own drug screening!
The NIDA-5, which the lab owner cheerfully informed me "wasn't very accurate, and cost 5 times what I could design myself..."
I kept a file on myself, sent myself in for testing, and posted notices to myself of "zero tolerance." It was lunacy, self-incrimination issues aside.
While I find it disgusting that many state court judges can't read their own state constitutions, as far as the U.S. constitution is concerned states have very broad authority in many issues. Much as I'm against this type of drug testing, for the U.S. Supreme Court to try to prevent it would be overreaching judicial activism.
If you have an idiot aviator with a cold who surreptitiously takes a bottle of Nyquil, then flies into a row of parked F-15s, well, make everyone in the Navy pee into a jar. That'll show him.
Likewise if some CBs are blowing a blunt behind some warehouse and get caught: don't dishonorably discharge them, make millions of innocent persons pee into a cup.
In the civilian world: If Holmes and his pal Pee Wee go into a bank and air it out with their Glocks, don't send them to the electric chair (that would be racist and mean-spirited). Make millions of innocents undergo background checks, waiting periods, or deny them their right to keep and bear arms under the Constitution, with a variety of sniveling municipal regulations and red tape.
In school, don't deal harshly with the few stonies who, after having finished their High School Libertarian Club meeting, go out and do a few lines of coke in the parking lot.
Don't kick them out -- their parents may sue you because their precious won't get into Harvard with an expulsion or a record.
Instead, make millions of innocent kids pee into a jar so that you can chicken out of dealing with the stonies.
It's disgusting.
Worst of all is that, during class, you make the kids parrot the Constitution's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures.
Then, ten minutes later, you throw that very real concept in the trashcan by making them pee into a jar.
Great way to show the kids that the Constitution is a "Living Document", i.e., not to be taken seriously.
This is truly terrible, the worst decision of the year by the Supremes.
Affirmative action losers or socialist FDR hacks, all.
The Supremes are a total disgrace to real lawyers who understand and love the Constitution and our system of law.
The average bright, good-willed seventh-grader has a far better grasp of the Constitution than the nine justices of the United States Supreme Court.
I am not exagerrating.
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