No Drug Test Left Behind
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The White House, supposedly committed to fiscal restraint, has no problem throwing around gobs of money to fight the War on Teenagers Drugs:
In a famous 1995 case, Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995), the Supreme Court nominally reiterated the longstanding principle that students in public schools have at least some of, though not all, the same constitutional rights that adults have. Borrowing from other (adult-oriented) drug screening cases, the Vernonia court crafted a wholly reasonable policy: In the narrow context of student sports, it is not unreasonable to screen student athletes for drug use without individualized suspicion. The reasoning was that "playing high" (or on steroids) was an inherently dangerous act, one that the government, through its educrats, has a compelling interest in preventing.
Fair enough, but the Vernonia court unfortunately avoided limiting suspicionless student drug tests to that specific scenario. Stated differently, Vernonia did not say "this far, but no further," but rather "this far, and we'll worry about the rest later."
"Later" came in 2002 and Pottawatomie County v. Earls, where suspicionless drug screening was expanded not just to student athletes but to all students participating in any extracurricular activity -- even the chess club. The Court tumbled down the slippery slope and insisted that, no, Vernonia in fact did not say what it said and did not really rely on the "safety" argument to justify the specific testing of student athletes and only student athletes because "sports are different." No, said the Court, since "all drug use is bad" and since "all drug use creates a safety issue," the student athlete argument that was the entire foundation for Vernonia was in fact a straw man and that it was in fact constitutional to expand suspicionless student drug testing to all participants in all extra-curricular activities.
You can guess where this is going.
If the Court's cognitive leap from Vernonia to Earls is legitimate, then it would of course also be legitimate to discard the "extra-curricular activities" bootstrap wholesale and simply say that "fighting drug use by students" is a sufficient government interest to test all students, period.
Eventually some public school district will do exactly that, and it will be challenged, and it will make its way to the Supreme Court. And the students will lose. Universal suspicionless drug testing of students is inevitable given the shoddy logic of Earls.
One more thing -- that shoddy logic belongs to Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the Earls opinion. Remind me again how he's a "great libertarian thinker"?
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Going back to the Bush budget: Regardless of whether one believes that suspicionless drug testing of public school students is constitutional, or wise, why exactly should the federal government pay for it? If it's simply another cost of doing business, then let the school districts -- and their taxpayers -- foot the bill and leave the federal government out of it.
And while we're on the subject -- shouldn't it be parents' responsibility, rather than the schools', to test their kids for drugs -- and to foot the bill?
The Bush administration on Wednesday unveiled its 2006 anti-drug program, a campaign that encourages more high schools to screen students and urges teens to live above the influence of drugs and peer pressure.The 2002 case was Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822 (2002). But first some background:
...
Since the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that schools can randomly test high school students in competitive extracurricular activities, his office and the Department of Education have provided grants and other support to at least 350 school districts to screen students.
In a famous 1995 case, Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995), the Supreme Court nominally reiterated the longstanding principle that students in public schools have at least some of, though not all, the same constitutional rights that adults have. Borrowing from other (adult-oriented) drug screening cases, the Vernonia court crafted a wholly reasonable policy: In the narrow context of student sports, it is not unreasonable to screen student athletes for drug use without individualized suspicion. The reasoning was that "playing high" (or on steroids) was an inherently dangerous act, one that the government, through its educrats, has a compelling interest in preventing.
Fair enough, but the Vernonia court unfortunately avoided limiting suspicionless student drug tests to that specific scenario. Stated differently, Vernonia did not say "this far, but no further," but rather "this far, and we'll worry about the rest later."
"Later" came in 2002 and Pottawatomie County v. Earls, where suspicionless drug screening was expanded not just to student athletes but to all students participating in any extracurricular activity -- even the chess club. The Court tumbled down the slippery slope and insisted that, no, Vernonia in fact did not say what it said and did not really rely on the "safety" argument to justify the specific testing of student athletes and only student athletes because "sports are different." No, said the Court, since "all drug use is bad" and since "all drug use creates a safety issue," the student athlete argument that was the entire foundation for Vernonia was in fact a straw man and that it was in fact constitutional to expand suspicionless student drug testing to all participants in all extra-curricular activities.
You can guess where this is going.
If the Court's cognitive leap from Vernonia to Earls is legitimate, then it would of course also be legitimate to discard the "extra-curricular activities" bootstrap wholesale and simply say that "fighting drug use by students" is a sufficient government interest to test all students, period.
Eventually some public school district will do exactly that, and it will be challenged, and it will make its way to the Supreme Court. And the students will lose. Universal suspicionless drug testing of students is inevitable given the shoddy logic of Earls.
One more thing -- that shoddy logic belongs to Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the Earls opinion. Remind me again how he's a "great libertarian thinker"?
---
Going back to the Bush budget: Regardless of whether one believes that suspicionless drug testing of public school students is constitutional, or wise, why exactly should the federal government pay for it? If it's simply another cost of doing business, then let the school districts -- and their taxpayers -- foot the bill and leave the federal government out of it.
And while we're on the subject -- shouldn't it be parents' responsibility, rather than the schools', to test their kids for drugs -- and to foot the bill?
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Posted by Kip on
11 February 2006
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