Board Of Education Vs. Earls: Random Drug Testing In Public Schools

In the United States, 6.5% of the 3,431,686 high school seniors smoke marijuana on a daily basis (“Drug Abuse”). This number equates to roughly 223,059 graduating high school students. Because of the high amounts of drug abuse used by middle and high school students, many public school districts have implemented random drug testing programs for teenagers interested in extracurricular activities. These programs examine their students for chemicals at an unplanned moment. The option for random drug testing would not have been available for public school districts if it were not for the Supreme Court case fought in 2002. The case that made high schools more superior than their students is called, Board of Education v. Earls. The contribution of

Nine judges will examine the case, analyze the arguments made by both parties, and then come to a conclusion on who made the best justifications. Lindsay Earls and Daniel James both made arguments stating that it was unjust for a public school district to probe their students for drugs. In James Kozlowski’s article, he states, “On appeal, the students had argued that ‘drug testing must be based at least on some level of individualized suspicion’” (Kozlowski 36). The Supreme Court’s response to the scholars’ explanation is that “It is true that we generally determine the reasonableness of a search by balancing the nature of the intrusion on the individual’s privacy against the promotion of legitimate governmental interests” (Kozlowski 36). The court continues to say that occasionally, public school districts have the right to intrude on the privacy of their students (Kozlowski 36-37). The school district’s argument is that there is a drug issue among students. In Thomas Proctor’s article on the case, he notes, “Like Acton, the facts in Earls confirmed a ‘drug problem’ manifested in a variety of ways: students that had appeared to be under the influence of drugs at school, students that had spoken openly about drug use, a

Earls affected the privacy of many students in the public school setting. The seclusion of students’ lives was now in the hands of their school districts’. In a survey conducted by Cynthia Kelly Conlon, she requested information from eighteen school administrators (ten of which responded) about their current efforts to stop drug use and if they will ever start a random drug testing program (Conlon 306-307). In the article, she states, “Three schools (30%) reported having some form of random drug testing; seven schools did not. One of these schools began testing students who had been disciplined for previous drug violations in the fall of 2002. The other two schools have been conducting random drug testing of athletes since 1997” (Conlon 307). The survey also asked principals for their opinion on the verdict of the case. Four of the administrators believed that the decision was justifiable; three thought that the ruling was unfair, and another three did not have an opinion. Conlon also interviewed ten headmasters on their opinions of the Supreme Court’s decision. All of the answers varied, but many preferred the choice of having random drug testing in their schools. In Conlon’s article, she adds, “The data from these interviews show that a high school’s decision to adopt random drug testing is a result of a complex interaction among all segments of the school community and the larger community” (Conlon 315). After analyzing a survey