WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, after avoiding the drug testing controversy for five years, voted yesterday to rule for the first time on the constitutionality of random screening -- particularly, mandatory tests of junior and senior high school athletes.
Drug tests for athletes have been imposed in many communities and at many colleges, especially in the years since 1986, when Len Bias, a University of Maryland basketball star who had just been chosen in the professional draft, died of a cocaine overdose in his room in College Park.
Random drug tests go further than any other kind, since they are based only on a general belief by officials that drugs are a problem, rather than on any suspicion that particular individuals are using illegal drugs.
Many government agencies, at all levels, have been using suspicionless screening for years, picking workers or students by some form of random choice, and requiring those chosen to provide urine samples under supervision.
Other kinds of testing are keyed to the kinds of jobs public workers may hold -- such as public safety positions in police and fire departments, national security jobs, and nuclear power plant crew positions -- or are used after an accident such as a railroad derailing.
Those are the kinds of screening the Supreme Court previously had upheld in a pair of limited rulings in 1989 -- its only rulings so far on any form of testing.
Since then, the court has refused repeatedly to be drawn back into the dispute, even though it has been offered repeated opportunities to do so. At least a half-dozen times, the court specifically has passed up cases on random drug tests, giving no reason for doing so.
It took on one such case yesterday in a dispute from the small Oregon logging town of Veronia, northwest of Portland. There, public school officials had grown worried in 1985 that their middle school and high school were beginning to develop a drug use problem.
After reading a story in a Portland newspaper about drug testing, Veronia officials studied the issue, and adopted a mandatory and suspicionless drug and alcohol testing program for school athletes, beginning in the fall of 1989. All students who want to take part in interscholastic sports must sign a form authorizing a urine test as a condition.
All such students get tested at the beginning of each sport season; then student athletes are tested at random on a weekly basis throughout the season. Students testing positive on such a test can face only a notice to parents at a minimum, but for a repeat positive test, they could be suspended from a sport for as long as three seasons.
7th-grader's suit
School officials contended that the testing program worked, reducing drug-related problems among athletes in particular.
But, in 1991, a seventh-grader at Veronia's middle school in 1991 passed the initial physical test, including a urine sampling, when he went out for football but then refused -- after talking it over with his parents -- to sign the consent form for periodic testing.
A federal appeals court, ruling on a lawsuit filed by his parents, struck down the random program last May, finding that it involved an intrusion into students' privacy rights. Disagreeing with other courts that have upheld such random tests of student athletes, the appeals court in the Veronia case said those rulings showed too little respect for students' privacy.
The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the case in February, and is expected to issue a final ruling by next summer.
Cigarette ads
In a second case dealing with government action affecting youths, the court gave at least temporary permission to states and cities seeking to shield minors from cigarette advertising.
The court rejected an appeal by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. challenging a decision last June by the California Supreme Court declaring that states retain the power to ban cigarette ads that induce youths to begin smoking -- at least when the states outlaw the buying and selling of cigarettes to minors.
Although a federal law controls some forms of cigarette advertising and labeling, the California state court said that states have not been barred entirely from acting to protect youths from illegal cigarette purchases. The state court ruling means that a trial now will be held on a California woman's claim that Reynolds' famous "Joe Camel" ad campaign was illegal under state law because it targeted youths.
Baltimore's law
The same kind of legal issue has arisen over ordinances passed by the Baltimore City Council virtually banning advertising for tobacco and liquor when those ads target youths. Constitutional challenges to those ordinances have been rejected by federal judges, but the cases are being appealed.
In another significant order yesterday, the Supreme Court agreed in an Arkansas drug-crimes case to decide whether the Constitution requires police to knock on the door and announce themselves before they may enter a home to conduct a search.