Lindsay Earls could have been our classmate. An honor student at her Oklahoma high school, she is now completing her first year at Dartmouth. While most college students spend the year going to classes and parties, Earls has spent much of her freshman year squaring off with the Supreme Court. The respondent in a landmark suit to invalidate school drug testing for extra-curricular activities, her life has become fodder not only for members of the court but for the national media as well. Justice Antonin Scalia, for one, took it upon himself to suggest that Earls would rather go to school with a bunch of "druggies" than submit to a urine test. The teenager, who was sitting in the courtroom when a red-faced Scalia made his remark, refused to comment on the Justice's angry words, preferring to return to school and get back to her life. In the meantime, the Court is considering her case, weighing concerns about privacy and drug use.
Many of the Justices seem to think that Earls' case is about drugs. Certainly that is what the petitioners, the School Board of Pottawatomie County, Oklahoma, would have them believe. After all, the district's administrators were the ones who initiated the policy Earls objects to, requiring that all students who participate in extra-curricular activities, from the debate team to the 4-H club, must submit to drug testing.
During the hearing held in March, Justice Kennedy commented that it was "hardly a revelation" that the government would be concerned about teenage drug use, a problem Scalia called "life and death" in this country. The drama of their argument was slightly punctured when Justice O'Connor pointed out that students involved in extracurriculars are among the least likely to use drugs. No matter who wins this particular argument, the bottom line is that the justices are missing the point. No matter how rampant drug use may be in American high schools, instituting a system of deterrence by fear and invasion of privacy is not the answer.
Lindsay Earls and her supporters, who include the ACLU and the National School Boards Association, are not soft on drugs, no matter how convenient it is for government lawyers or members of the Court to paint them that way. Earls, who says she has never taken drugs, passed the very test she is challenging. Her case is about more than marijuana and urine samples; it is about rights.
If the justices rule against Lindsay Earls, they set a dangerous precedent. One lawyer for the government even admitted during the hearing that upholding the Oklahoma policy would effectively give constitutional credence to mandatory drug testing for all public school students. Perhaps this is not surprising from a representative of the Bush Administration, which seems to view civil liberties as perks of citizenship, to be taken away at the pleasure of the president or the attorney general. It would, however, be an unacceptable paradigm for the Supreme Court to accept. Deciding for the petitioners would mean that students legally required to attend schools would also be forced to submit to a degrading test without cause. It would send a signal that the rights of children are somehow less important than the rights of adults, that an invasion of a minor's privacy is not only legal but acceptable.
Teenagers are hardly power players in law and policy-making. Their voices are often ignored or silenced. Perhaps that is why Lindsay Earls is so remarkable. She saw injustice in her school and did something about it. As she sat through oral arguments in the Supreme Court, listening to justices make false suggestions about her past, Earls must have wondered if her decision to speak out was worth it. We, as her peers, can only hope that the Court validates her choice and decides in her favor. In doing so, they can show respect for the rights of all Americans, no matter what age, and ensure that a public education does not mean a lack of privacy. Katherine Reilly is from Short Hills, N.J. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.
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