Tecumseh High School's Drug Testing Policy, adapted from The Student Activities Drug Testing Policy and used by Tecumseh, Oklahoma, School District, required students to consent to drug testing in the form of urinalysis in order to participate in extracurricular activities. There was also described to be a drug problem in the School District, which is why the policy was adopted. During the test, a student would produce a sample inside a closed bathroom stall while an administer waited outside and listened to make sure that the sample was not being tampered with. Afterward, the results collected were kept in a confidential file, separate from other student records. Results were handed out to authorized personnel on a “need to know” basis, and law enforcement was not informed if a drug test returned positive. After the third positive test, students were suspended from participating in extracurriculars for either 88 days or until the end of the school year (whichever was longer).
In the case Board of Ed. Of Independent School Dist. No. 92 of Pottawatomie Cty. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822 (2002), students Lindsay Earls and Daniel James and their parents alleged that Tecumseh High School's Drug Testing Policy violated the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects people’s right to privacy from unlawful searches and seizures that lack probable-cause. Earls and James believed that, “the School District failed to identify a special need for testing students who participate in extracurricular activities.’” Earls and James argued that there was insufficient evidence of the alleged drug abuse issue in the area. Therefore, there was not enough probable-cause to justify the intrusion of privacy brought upon by the school’s policy. Tecumseh High School disagreed. It believed its policy was a reasonable way of furthering its important interest of preventing its students from using drugs. The school’s need to prevent:
The substantial harm of childhood drug use provides the necessary immediacy for a school testing policy. Indeed, it would make little sense to require the school district to wait for a substantial portion of its students to begin using drugs before it was allowed to institute a drug testing program designed to deter drug use.
The school is responsible for maintaining the health, discipline, and safety of its students. Having to wait for a serious drug problem to arise before anything can be done about it interferes with the school’s ability to protect its students. Therefore, the current drug issue at the time and the school’s important interest to protect its students was justification enough for the School District’s Drug Testing Policy. Tecumseh High School believed it was not violating the Fourth Amendment.
The majority opinion of the Court was delivered by Justice Thomas and joined by Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia, and Justice Breyer. It was determined that Tecumseh High School’s Drug Testing Policy was constitutional and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. This decision was based on precedent law and interpretation of student rights. Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995) had established that conducting random drug tests on athletes was constitutional. The Court then stretched the ruling from Vernonia v. Acton to include all students participating in extracurriculars. Vernonia had also established that, by voluntarily participating in athletic activities, students were showing that they recognized and subjected themselves to a diminished sense of privacy. The Court took this to mean that students of Tecumseh High School, by willingly participating in extracurriculars, were showing that they accepted the guidelines that came with those extracurriculars. Tecumseh’s policy was one of the guidelines of the extracurricular activities. In addition, Justice Thomas concluded that although, “schoolchildren do not shed their constitutional rights when they enter the school house […] ‘Fourth amendment rights … are different in public schools than elsewhere; the reasonableness inquiry cannot disregard the schools’ custodial and tutelary responsibility.’” A school has certain important interests. Those interests, at times, override students’ rights. In Board of Ed. v. Earls, the school’s important interest was to prevent its students from using drugs. The Court found it urgent to protect this interest because the School District had a history of drug issues, but, in order to do so, students’ right to privacy had to be limited. However, the Court found it reasonable to limit that right because of the context of the case. A search or invasion of privacy like the one in Tecumseh High School is reasonable, “when supported by ‘special needs’ beyond the normal need for law enforcement. Because the ‘reasonableness’ inquiry cannot disregard the schools’ custodial and tutelary responsibility for children […] a finding of individualized suspicion may not be necessary.” Traditionally, in order for a search to be reasonable, probable-cause must be demonstrated. However, because the context of this case is different from the criminal context probable-cause is generally associated with, the Court found that the current evidence the school had on the drug abuse happening was enough to enforce mandatory drug tests on all student participating in extracurricular activities. Otherwise, the school would have been unable to protect the health of its students. As a result, Tecumseh’s drug testing policy was found to be constitutional, because it furthered the school’s important interest and similar conditions in Vernonia had been established as constitutional.
Justice Breyer filed a concurrence. He agreed with the conclusion and reasons given by the Court, but he wanted to emphasize certain points. Justice Breyer stated that the, “drug problem in our Nation’s schools is serious in terms of size, the kinds of drugs being used, and the consequences of that use both for our children and the rest of us.” He agreed with the school and the majority opinion that an issue of drug abuse in a high school is not to be taken lightly. The expectation and responsibility of a school is to protect its students from a drug issue if one appears, as it did it Tecumseh High School. The responsibilities of a school mimic that of a parent’s; schools have to feed students, provide medical services, and take care of students before and after school. These responsibilities are where the law “in loco parentis” comes from. This law, as interpreted by Justice Breyer, “reflects, not that a child or adolescent lacks an interest in privacy, but that a child’s or adolescent’s school-related privacy interest, when compared to the privacy interests of an adult, has different dimensions.” The school is like a parent to students, and every parent has a responsibility to care for their child. That responsibility is of greater importance than a student’s right to privacy because it is in the good interest of protecting the student. Tecumseh High School’s policy was put in place in order to protect its students’ health and safety, which was a legitimate and justifiable reason to limit students’ right to privacy. Therefore, Justice Breyer agreed with the majority opinion that the school’s policy was constitutional.
Justice Ginsburg, joined by Justice Stevens, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Souter, filed a dissent. Justice Ginsburg disagreed with the majority opinion’s finding that Tecumseh High School’s policy was constitutional, because she believed that Board of Ed. v. Earls and Vernonia shared dissimilar context. The Vernonia School District had a good reason to make its athletes submit to random drug testing; there was an “explosive drug abuse problem” in that school district which was led by athletes. In that context, Justice Ginsburg agreed that random drug testing was reasonable. In contrast, Tecumseh, “repeatedly reported to Federal Government during the period leading up to the adoption of the policy that ‘types of drugs [other than alcohol and tobacco] including controlled dangerous substances, are present [in schools] but have not identified themselves as major problems at this time.” The majority opinion made the drug abuse issue sound much more extreme than it really was, so the issue that the Vernonia School District was facing was not comparable to Tecumseh High School’s. There were also no unidentifiable leaders, unlike in Vernonia. In addition, students’ privacy was being imposed upon more in Board of Ed. v. Earls than in Vernonia. Justice Ginsburg considered athletes to have a different level of expectation of privacy than band or choir students: “Competitive extracurricular activities other than athletics, however, serve students of all manner: the modest and shy along with the bold and inhibited.” Someone in choir or band does not have to use the locker rooms, change, and shower in front of other students like an athlete. That is not something that is expected of when someone signs up to join the band. Tecumseh’s policy was much more intrusive because it included people who have a higher expectation of privacy. Justice Ginsburg disagreed with the majority opinion that the ruling in Vernonia justified Tecumseh High School’s policy because the two cases faced different contexts.
Board of Ed v. Earls greatly limited the rights of students. It broadened the requirements needed to justify searching and invading a students’ privacy. It made it acceptable for schools to randomly test students on the basis that they are participating in an extracurricular activity. After Board of Ed v. Earls, a school could state that its reason for searching a student was because they were suspicious, and that would be enough. If a Court were to use this as a precedent case when examining another issue of privacy between a student and a school, it would be very hard for the student to win. Any piece of evidence brought against the student could be deemed as suspicious and therefore justifiable, or the school could claim it was acting in the best interests of its students. Board of Ed v. Earls reinterpreted the constitutional rights of students and made their privacy less important than a school’s responsibilities.