Veronica School District 47j, Petitioner

Veronica School District 47J, Petitioner v. Wayne Action et ux., etc.

The extent to which children within the public schools possess the constitutional rights of adults has yielded many ambiguous (some might say contradictory) decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court in recent decades. While the U.S. Supreme Court had found during the Vietnam War that a student's rights to wear armbands symbolically condemning the war could not be infringed upon, in New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985), "the Court rejected the argument that public schools stand on the same footing as private schools (which exercised only parental power -- a power not subject to the constitutional constraints of the Fourth Amendment) because students were 'required' to attend school" (Forensic Evidence, 2009). The student in question in T.L.O. had been searched after being found smoking in the school bathroom, and had marijuana and other evidence of drug use and drug sales in her purse. The student's father had attempted to get the evidence thrown out in absence of a warrant. However, the Court found requiring teachers to get warrants every time they searched a student in a non-intrusive manner would be unduly burdensome.

However, in 1995 with the Veronica School District 47J, Petitioner v. Wayne Action et ux., etc., the U.S. Supreme Court took the T.L.O. decision one step further. It ruled that the school district had the right to conduct drug tests upon student athletes in a blanket fashion, without probable cause. The Veronica School District said it was concerned about the prevalence of drug use amongst its students. According to Veronica, school athletes were the predominant drivers of the drug culture of the school. The school said it was concerned about the potential for injury amongst student athletes, given the risks of drug use for athletes. To circumvent this problem, all students participating in interscholastic athletics had to sign a consent form that they were willing to be tested for illicit drug use at the beginning of the season and then subject to random testing. Approximately 10% of the athletes would be subjected to random testing. This testing was not conducted with probable cause. One seventh grader refused to sign this form, which prompted the lawsuit that eventually was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. The student and his parents argued the policy violated the boy's Fourth Amendment rights. "The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that the Federal Government shall not violate '[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures'" admitted Justice Scalia in his decision.

But Justice Scalia, writing for the 5-4 majority, argued that the school's searches were reasonable, and that public school children were already routinely submitted to searches without probable cause: "Fourth Amendment rights, no less than First and Fourteenth Amendment rights, are different in public schools than elsewhere; the 'reasonableness' inquiry cannot disregard the schools' custodial and tutelary responsibility for children. For their own good and that of their classmates, public school children are routinely required to submit to various physical examinations, and to be vaccinated against various diseases." Testing student athletes for drugs was necessary, said Scalia, because of health reasons, much like vaccinations.

Scalia also argued that student athletes have a reduced expectation of privacy, given that they have agreed to participate in a sport. Deterring drug use amongst students, wrote Scalia, was more important than students' constitutional rights. Scalia also found that the method by which the search was conducted, namely that "process of obtaining urine samples under the Policy are negligible, since the conditions of collection are nearly identical to those typically encountered in public restrooms. In addition, the tests look only for standard drugs, not medical conditions, and the results are released to a limited group."

Justice O'Connor, however, dissented, pointing out that non-individuated searches have seldom been allowed under the Fourth Amendment. "The view that mass, suspicionless searches, however evenhanded, are generally unreasonable remains inviolate in the criminal law enforcement context… Thus, it remains the law that the police cannot, say, subject to drug testing every person entering or leaving a certain drug-ridden neighborhood in order to find evidence of crime." She pointed out that there was no evidence of drug-related injury to athletes as a group and that the vaccination analogy fell flat, given that there was no accusatory suspicion attached to vaccinations.