Todd v. Rush County Schools, 97-2548
| Decision Date | 12 January 1998 |
| Docket Number | No. 97-2548,97-2548 |
| Citation | 133 F.3d 984 |
| Parties | 125 Ed. Law Rep. 18 William P. TODD and Diana J. Todd, on their own behalf and as next friends for their son, William Matthew Todd, Steve Hammons, et al., Plaintiffs-Appellants, v. RUSH COUNTY SCHOOLS and Ed Lyskowinski, in his official capacity as Superintendent of the Rush County Schools, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
Kenneth J. Falk (argued), Indiana Civil Liberties Union, Indianapolis, IN, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.
Rodney V. Taylor (argued), David J. Theising, Christopher & Taylor, Indianapolis, IN, John O. Worth, Rushville, IN, for Defendants-Appellees.
Before CUMMINGS, MANION and EVANS, Circuit Judges.
This suit was filed by four parents and as next friends for their four children, all students at Rushville Consolidated High School in Rushville, Indiana. In August 1996, the Rush County School Board approved a program prohibiting a high school student from participating in any extracurricular activities or driving to and from school unless the student and parent or guardian consented to a test for drugs, alcohol or tobacco in random, unannounced urinalysis examinations. Extracurricular activities include athletic teams, Student Council, Foreign Language Clubs, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Future Farmers of America Officers and the Library Club. When consent for testing is given, participation in the extracurricular organizations or driving to and from school are permitted. The testing is conducted by Midwest Toxicology Services, which collects the samples, and the Witham Hospital Laboratory Services, which performs the analyses. The $30 test is paid for by a grant.
If a test result is positive, the student and family are informed and permitted to explain the result by showing, for example, that the student is taking a medication that would influence the result. Without a satisfactory explanation, the student is barred from extracurricular activities or driving to and from school until passing a retest. However, a positive test result is not to be used in school discipline proceedings. If a student tests positive, the student and his or her parents will be given the names of agencies that might assist the student's recovery. Also if a student tests positive, he or she may request a new urine test. Otherwise the student may be retested after an appropriate interval but will continue to be barred from extracurricular activities and driving to and from school until testing negative.
This program concerns random suspicionless testing. The high school does reserve the right to test any student if it has reasonable suspicion of drug use. If a student tests positive twice, the school is deemed to have reasonable suspicion justifying further retests even though the student will no longer be permitted to engage in any extracurricular activities due to the prior positive results. Tests based on reasonable suspicion, unlike the suspicionless tests, do subject the student to school discipline.
This case was initiated by the students' and parents' complaint and activated by their motion for summary judgment which was denied. In turn, the defendants Rush County Schools and its superintendent filed a motion for summary judgment, which was subsequently granted.
When the summary judgment motions were filed in the trial court, random tests had been performed on five or six occasions involving 20 to 30 students each time. Five to eight students tested positive, three or four for marijuana and the rest for nicotine. From 1992 to 1997 there were no alcohol related expulsions, zero to one tobacco-related expulsion per year, and one to four drug-related expulsions. Expulsions are not involved in the rule being challenged here. As to suspensions, there were two to nine for alcohol, 21 to 44 for tobacco, and one to nine for drugs.
A 1994 survey of Rush County high school students was conducted by the Indiana Prevention Resource Center and disclosed that cigarette use for Rush County 10th graders was higher than the Indiana average and that alcohol use for 11th and 12th graders was also higher than the state average. Marijuana usage was lower for 9th and 12th graders than the state average. Two witnesses stated that drug use has been increasing at the high school, causing the drowning of a senior and an automobile crash where the students were inhaling the contents of aerosol cans.
As the opinion below reveals, there were 950 students in the Rush County High School for the 1996-1997 school year. Seven hundred twenty-eight agreed to sign with the drug testing program. Of those, 170 did not participate in extracurricular activities (including athletics) or drive to and from school. Plaintiff William Todd's parents refused to sign a consent form for the drug testing program, resulting in his being barred from videotaping the football team. Likewise, the parents of the three plaintiff Hammons children refused to sign the consent form and the children are therefore barred from participating in any extracurricular activities. One of the Hammons children had been a member of the Library Club and another a member of the Future Farmers of America.
The issue before this Court is whether Rush County Schools' drug testing program under which all students who wish to participate in extracurricular activities must consent to random and suspicionless urine testing for alcohol, unlawful drug, and cigarette usage violates the Fourth Amendment rights of those students. 1 For the following reasons we hold that Rush County Schools' drug testing program is consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
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