All students: You are expected to make significant comments to one case brief every week (except the week that you submit your revised case brief here). Your response should be at least 250 words. A significant comment may include any comparison to your own case brief or assigned video, any pertinent insight from your current employment about how you fulfill the holding, disagreement with the holding with rationale, etc. You will be expected to compare / contrast with current events.
Vernonia School Dist. V Acton 515 U.S. 646 (1995)Facts section:The Vernonia School District in Oregon had a spike in drug use, especially in student athletes. To get rid of it, the district began to offer different resources like speakers and trained dogs to inspect the students. Since this didn’t help, they began to have a policy which stated that if students wanted to participate in interscholastic athletics, they were going to be drug tested randomly and had to sign a consent knowing this. If a student athlete refuses to partake in the test, they will automatically be prevented from sports activities for two years. The result of a drug test would be private, only the parent and associated staff would know.James Acton was a seventh grader at the time when he wanted to sign up to play football. He was never in trouble, nor would you suspect him using any drugs. When he signed up to play football he was denied because him and his parents refused to sign the testing consent forms. The Acton’s then filed a lawsuit against the school district board because the random drug test would violate James fourth amendment rights. The Fourth Amendment states protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. To decide the ruling, the court conducted a balancing test. The balancing test weighed the student’s privacy and rights against the states need for testing. For the student’s privacy, it would be embarrassing and degrading to urinate for a test and the urinate test will reveal more things than just drug use. Also, it invades the individuals’ rights to control their own medical results and treatment, as for the athletes, it overseas off the field conduct. For the state’s need for testing the argument was either way students have reduced privacy expectations since they are in school grounds, schools already do health examinations for student athletes, And the testing would only be searching for drug use and would not be turned over to law enforcement.Issue:Does the search for drugs used in students violate the constitutional right to privacy? And is it considered an unreasonable search and seizure which violates the 4th amendment?Ruling (holding):The US Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, stated that the search does not violate the fourth because school safety was more of a concern than the individuals’ right. Also, that inter-school athletics was voluntary, so since James wasn’t on the sports team yet, he wouldn’t have gotten tested unless he officially got on the team.Rationale: The Supreme Court did consider James fourth amendment rights but because the school was doing the drug testing because they wanted to protect the students from actively doing drugs, they felt as it if was they right choice to let the school district continue to do these tests. This case was important because more school districts began to drug test students that were participating in school sports activities, and it was the first time the Supreme Court allows this type of testing happen without any suspicion. If student A is suspected of doing drugs and student B isn’t, is it fair that student Bs’ expectation of privacy gets to be violated and disturbed for doing nothing wrong? This act of drug testing student B would be completely violating his Fourth Amendment rights hence before any search can be done there must be a probable cause. So, would the search against students with no suspicion of drug use be reasonable?The first thing to look at is how privacy expectations are opposed in schools. School athletes have no type of privacy. For example, their grades are always shared with the coaches and the athletic department and nowadays, they must be very careful of what they post on social media with their jerseys on. This is because schools have supervision over them. Not to mention that a lot of parents disagree with this because of how they would collect the drug test and the other different types of information that can be collected within the test. How would parents and students know the results of the test would be confidential? How would they know if they are being tested for other things? If it was a urine test, the test could determine kidney diseases, diabetes, liver disease, UTIs and pregnancy test. Why would it be okay for a school to know all these results? Although they are just students to the school, as an own individual they have rights that aren’t supposed to be violated against, even for the states need for testing.
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