Opinion ID: 853224
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Preventative/Rehabilitative versus Punitive Purposes

Text: I do not place much stock in the fact that the results of NSC's drug tests are not routinely volunteered to law enforcement authorities. Regardless of the stated purpose of the testing, I do not agree with the majority that [a] preventative or rehabilitative search is inherent to a school corporation's function. Indeed, I find no support for such a notion. A school corporation's inherent function is to educate, not to monitor an arbitrarily defined category of students for the use of drugs, alcohol or nicotine, or compliance with other laws. The testing conducted in Vernonia was necessary to that school's inherent educational function because the education of the students was severely affected by the immediate crisis prompted by the sharp rise in students' use of unlawful drugs. Chandler, 520 U.S. at 319, 117 S.Ct. 1295. This crisis included severe disruption of classroom activities. In any case, NSC's program is not the method of preserving a proper educational environment envisioned by T.L.O., on which the majority relies. T.L.O. dealt with smoking in the school and the ability of teachers and principals to respond swiftly to address conduct in the educational environment without adhering to the formal requirements of the Fourth Amendment. These situations certainly may require immediate action. But that is not the case presented by NSC. Nor does NSC argue that its students have run amok, as was the case in Vernonia. Finally, there is no claim that the testing of these groups of students, distinct from the population as a whole, has any relation to NSC's perceived drug problem. The Tenth Circuit, in Earls v. Tecumseh Pub. Sch. Dist. No. 92, 242 F.3d 1264 (10th Cir.2001), cert. granted, ___ U.S. ___, 122 S.Ct. 509, 151 L.Ed.2d 418 (Nov. 8, 2001), invalidated a drug testing program for that reason. The majority distinguishes Earls based on differences between its policy and NSC's. But Earls turned not on the nature of the school district's policy, but on the classification of students subjected to the searches. The Tenth Circuit saw little efficacy in a drug testing policy which tests students among whom there is no measurable drug problem. 242 F.3d at 1277. Finally, the preventative nature of NSC's program proves too much. If it is a legitimate objective, it gives reason for NSC to test every student. Willis v. Anderson Cmty. Sch. Corp., 158 F.3d 415, 422 (7th Cir.1998), cert. denied, 526 U.S. 1019, 119 S.Ct. 1254, 143 L.Ed.2d 351 (1999) (If [deterrence] were the only relevant consideration, Vernonia might as well have sanctioned blanket testing of all children in public schools. And this it did not do.). Of course, such testing is not permissible. Cf. Joy, 212 F.3d at 1067 ([T]he case has yet to be made that a urine sample can be the `tuition' at a public school.). As T.L.O. reminded us: [T]he reasonableness standard should ensure that the interests of students will be invaded no more than is necessary to achieve the legitimate end of preserving order in the schools. The rights of NSC's students or at least the ones NSC has chosen to testshould be subject to no more of an intrusion than necessary to achieve NSC's interest in preserving order in its schools. In my view, the issue is not, as the majority's reasoning suggests, whether NSC's policy is comparable to those imposed at other schools and documented in other cases. Rather it is whether NSC's program, and its suspicionless testing of broad categories of students, is justified at all. It is incumbent upon NSC to prove this, and its failure to do so leaves its program well short of complying with Article I, Section 11.