Student Drug Testing: Constitutional Issues

Publication Date: July 2002

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Social conditions

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Abstract:

Issues of personal privacy and application of Fourth Amendment safeguards against "unreasonable" governmental searches and seizures are the focus of judicial rulings on the constitutionality of "suspicionless" random drug testing of public school students. Generally speaking, governmental actors are required by the Fourth Amendment to obtain warrants based on probable cause in order to effectuate constitutional searches and seizure. An exception to ordinary warrant requirements has gradually evolved, however, for cases where a "special need" of the government, not related to criminal law enforcement, is found by the courts to outweigh any "diminished expectation" of privacy invaded by the search. The special needs analysis, first applied to administrative searches to enforce municipal health and safety regulations, has been extended by the Supreme Court to uphold suspicionless drug testing of employees in federally regulated industries, and random testing of high school student athletes. Revisiting the issue last term, in Board of Education of Independent School District No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a drug testing program of students participating in non-athletic extracurricular activities, even though negligible evidence of a drug use problem among such students was shown.