Drug tests for school activities tossed out!

At long last, a court finally gets it.

Calling someone a stoner or a "dry druggie" has been like the punch of death in postdemocratic America. The U.S. Supreme Court has been eager to feed this witch hunt, as activist right-wing Justices concoct legal theories out of whole cloth to run roughshod over constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

This was evident in 2002 when the court ruled that public schools could violate the constitutional right to privacy by requiring students in extracurricular activities to take a drug test.

But this drug war bully run may be winding down in California.

A school in Redding, California, was recently sued over its drug testing requirement for school activities like the chess club or Future Farmers of America. But a judge has now thrown out this policy.

This was accomplished by noting that privacy protections appear to be stronger under the California Constitution than under the U.S. Constitution. Remember, the U.S. Supreme Court had absurdly ruled that there's no right to privacy in the federal Constitution - even though there is.

Naturally, the school district is threatening to waste more of the taxpayers' money by appealing the new ruling against drug tests.

It's tempting to endorse an amendment to the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing the right to privacy, to settle this once and for all. But that right is already found in the Constitution, for it is embodied largely in the Fourth Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has chosen to ignore this right.

(Source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/06/BAQP17G3S6.DTL&tsp=1)