Washington Supreme Court Rules Against Suspicionless Student Drug Testing

In an unanimous decision released March 13, 2008, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled that suspicionless random drug testing as a requirement to participate in extracurricular school sponsored athletic activities is unconstitutional. The court’s majority ruling explains:

We are aware there are strong arguments, policies, and opinions marshaled on both sides of this debate, but we are concerned only with the policy’s constitutionality. And while we are loath to disturb the decisions of a local school board, we will not hesitate to intervene when constitutional protections are implicated. 

   No matter the drawbacks or merits of the school district’s random drug testing, we cannot let the policy stand if it offends our constitution. Students “do not ’shed their constitutional rights’ at the schoolhouse door.”

The question before us is narrow: Whether Wahkiakum School District’s blanket policy requiring student athletes to submit to random drug testing is constitutional. The United States Supreme Court has held such activity does not violate the Fourth Amendment to the federal constitution. But we have never decided whether a suspicionless, random drug search of student athletes violates article I, section 7 of our state constitution. Therefore, we must decide whether our state constitution follows the federal standard or provides more protection to students in the state of Washington. 

The decision continues, explaining the reasoning of the justices:

Though we have not considered drug testing in public schools, we have a long history of striking down exploratory searches not based on at least reasonable suspicion….  

 In Mesiani, this court held a random roadblock sobriety checkpoint program initiated by Seattle police was “highly intrusive” search and violated “the right to not be disturbed in one’s private affairs guaranteed by article I, section 7.” In Kuehn, this court held a search of student luggage required by school officials as a condition of participation in a school-sponsored trip to Canada violated both the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 7. We opined, “[i]n the absence of individualized suspicion of wrongdoing, the search is a general search. ‘[W]e never authorize general, exploratory searches,’” (alteration in original) and such searches are “anathema to the Fourth Amendment and Const. art. 1, § 7 protections.” 

In conclusion, Justice Richard B. Sanders wrote:

We cannot countenance random searches of public school student athletes with our article I, section 7 jurisprudence. As stated earlier, we require a warrant except for rare occasions, which we jealously and narrowly guard. We decline to adopt a doctrine similar to the federal special needs exception in the context of randomly drug testing student athletes. In sum, no argument has been presented that would bring the random drug testing within any reasonable interpretation of the constitutionally required “authority of law.”      

The concurrences for the case are available here, here, and here.

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