The School as Breathalyzer
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Dark times at Ridgemont High:
To understand the egregiousness of this policy, you need to retrace the history of random drug testing of students, which I conveniently provide in this post. Here's the abridged version.
In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995), the Supreme Court took its first baby step down the path to unlimited random drug testing of public school students. In Vernonia, the Court crafted a very narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement: In the limited context of student athletes, random drug testing was a permissible safety measure.
It was quite simple, really: high school football players might hurt themselves if they played high or drunk, so the public school (i.e., the government) had a good reason to randomly test them without individualized suspicion. Or so we were told.
But then it suddenly wasn't quite so simple anymore: From the narrow fact pattern in Vernonia, the Court's reasoning quickly imploded. Suddenly it went from athletics to all extracurricular activities* (but how much harm can a stoned chess team do to themselves?). Suddenly a carefully crafted exception became a mere reasonableness test — reasonable to be defined, of course, by the school administrators. From "this and only this" to "whatever you feel like."
That simply cannot be right.
Today, we are not quite at the point where the Court has completely surrendered the Vernonia reasoning; there is no Supreme Court case expressly authorizing random drug testing of students "just because" (i.e., for whatever flimsy reason — e.g., "peer pressure" — that public school administrators might choose to concoct). But we're close, as case studies such as the nanny-state educrats of Pequannock High School and their absurd "War on Peer Pressure" clearly demonstrate.
Oh, and let's keep in mind that this is testing for alcohol, not drugs. Minors notwithstanding, the government interest — uncompelling to begin with — is even less compelling in the context of mere alcohol (which, recall, minors can obtain legally from their parents).
There was a time when "students did not shed their constitutional rights at schoolhouse gate."** Now they shed their pants so they can pee in the cup.
UPDATE: Related post at Rolling Doughnut.
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*Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822 (2002).
**Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969).
Teens who drink alcohol could be caught three days later under a [New Jersey] high school's new testing policy for students.Peer pressure.
The test, which will be given randomly to students at Pequannock Township High School, can detect whether alcohol was consumed up to 80 hours earlier.
Pequannock Superintendent Larrie Reynolds said the policy approved last week should be a deterrent to students who feel peer pressure to drink.
To understand the egregiousness of this policy, you need to retrace the history of random drug testing of students, which I conveniently provide in this post. Here's the abridged version.
In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995), the Supreme Court took its first baby step down the path to unlimited random drug testing of public school students. In Vernonia, the Court crafted a very narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement: In the limited context of student athletes, random drug testing was a permissible safety measure.
It was quite simple, really: high school football players might hurt themselves if they played high or drunk, so the public school (i.e., the government) had a good reason to randomly test them without individualized suspicion. Or so we were told.
But then it suddenly wasn't quite so simple anymore: From the narrow fact pattern in Vernonia, the Court's reasoning quickly imploded. Suddenly it went from athletics to all extracurricular activities* (but how much harm can a stoned chess team do to themselves?). Suddenly a carefully crafted exception became a mere reasonableness test — reasonable to be defined, of course, by the school administrators. From "this and only this" to "whatever you feel like."
That simply cannot be right.
Today, we are not quite at the point where the Court has completely surrendered the Vernonia reasoning; there is no Supreme Court case expressly authorizing random drug testing of students "just because" (i.e., for whatever flimsy reason — e.g., "peer pressure" — that public school administrators might choose to concoct). But we're close, as case studies such as the nanny-state educrats of Pequannock High School and their absurd "War on Peer Pressure" clearly demonstrate.
Oh, and let's keep in mind that this is testing for alcohol, not drugs. Minors notwithstanding, the government interest — uncompelling to begin with — is even less compelling in the context of mere alcohol (which, recall, minors can obtain legally from their parents).
There was a time when "students did not shed their constitutional rights at schoolhouse gate."** Now they shed their pants so they can pee in the cup.
UPDATE: Related post at Rolling Doughnut.
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*Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822 (2002).
**Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U.S. 503 (1969).
Related Posts (on one page):
- "Do the Parenting For Me" Quote of the Day
- The School as Breathalyzer
- I Know What You Smoked Last Summer
- No Drug Test Left Behind
Posted by Kip on
30 January 2007
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