Supreme Court to Decide Issue of Drug Testing at School : Privacy: Oregon case involving mandatory checks for student athletes to be heard. Justices will review Fourth Amendment ‘unreasonable search’ ban.

The Supreme Court said Monday that it would decide whether school officials can force student athletes to undergo regular drug tests.

The justices said they would review a ruling by a federal appeals court in California, which struck down the drug tests at an Oregon high school as a violation of the students’ right to privacy.

Because of that ruling in May, public schools in California and eight other Western states are barred from testing students for drugs. However, such tests are legal in the Midwest because of a conflicting ruling from an appeals court in Chicago.

The Oregon case, to be argued early next year, requires the court to define again the reach of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on “unreasonable searches” by government agents.

Until the 1980s, the court had taken the view that the Fourth Amendment barred police and others from undertaking a search without some reason to believe that a person had violated the law.

But more recently, in response to the “war on drugs,” the court has abandoned its previous strict rule and instead allowed general searches of persons even where there was no evidence that any individual had used drugs.

In 1989, for example, the high court upheld a mandatory drug test for workers whose jobs involve public safety and security, such as train engineers and customs agents.

Some lower courts have read those decisions narrowly to apply only to certain employees, such as air traffic controllers or nuclear plant operators. Others, however, have said that they open the door for general urine testing of all persons where illegal drugs may pose a serious problem.

The small logging town of Vernonia, Ore., would not appear at first glace to be on the front lines in the war on drugs.

But in the late 1980s, school officials there said that drug use had become “epidemic.”

“Students boasted about drug use. Drug paraphernalia was confiscated on school grounds,” they said, and students were observed smoking marijuana in a cafe across the street from the high school. Even worse, they said, student athletes were “the leaders of the drug activity.”

Frustrated, the school board approved a policy in 1989 requiring all boys and girls who sign up for sports to undergo a urine test for drugs. Also, during the season, 10% of the athletes were tested weekly.

Few drug users were found, lawyers said. Only two students tested positive in the first three years of the program.

It was challenged by the parents of James Acton, a seventh grader who wanted to play football but was denied permission when his mother and father refused to consent to having their son tested for drugs.

A federal judge in Portland upheld the policy but it was struck down by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

“Children are compelled to attend school but nothing suggests they lose their right to privacy in their excretory functions when they do so,” wrote Judge Ferdinand Fernandez.

A lawyer who represented the parents said that school officials had no evidence, then or now, that students were impaired by drugs.

“If the mere potential presence of drugs is sufficient (to justify mandatory testing), we’re all going to be marched off to the bathroom,” said Thomas M. Christ, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer in Portland.

But, an attorney for the school district noted, a 1985 high court ruling made clear that students do not have the same Fourth Amendment rights as adults.

“There is a different standard. You’re dealing with kids here,” said Timothy R. Volpert, also of Portland.

Both lawyers in the case (Vernonia School District vs. Acton, 93-590) said they were unaware of other school districts in Oregon that require drug tests for athletes. Such tests are more common in college sports. In January, the California Supreme Court said that random drug testing of college athletes does not violate the state Constitution’s right to privacy.

In other actions, the justices:

* Agreed to rule on whether police officers must knock and announce themselves before entering homes with a search warrant (Darlene Wilson vs. Arkansas, 94-5707). The “knock and announce” rule has divided courts around the country. Some have said that police must not only knock on the door, but wait a reasonable period of time before entering a dwelling.

But others have said that the Constitution does not require officers to delay when entering a home, so long as they have obtained a search warrant in advance.

* Let stand a ruling that shields the government from being sued by a female Navy reservist from San Diego who was infected with the AIDS virus by a Navy enlisted man (Diane Washington vs. United States, 94-22). The case demonstrates again that service personnel cannot sue the government when they are injured, even if the injuries took place off the base and if the military officials were clearly negligent.

In this case the Navy woman said that officers knew an enlisted man had AIDS but did not warn her or order him to divulge that information to sexual partners. But the high court has insisted that judges not “second guess” military decisions by allowing lawsuits to proceed to trial.

* Agreed to hear the Justice Department’s bid to reinstate two criminal convictions against U.S. District Judge Robert P. Aguilar of San Jose. He was convicted of leaking news of an FBI wiretap to an ex-mobster but his conviction was overturned by a federal appeals court.

* JOE CAMEL SUIT: Court refuses to derail lawsuit against cigarette symbol. D2