Oakridge drug test lawsuit argued.

Byline: DAVID STEVES The Register-Guard

SALEM - On Monday afternoon, when thousands of students her age were on tracks and ballfields gearing up for the spring sports season, 17-year-old Ginelle Weber sat in the audience of the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Weber clasped hands with her mother while they listened to lawyers argue the lawsuit she and her parents filed, challenging the Oakridge School District's random drug testing policy for student athletes.

The case, argued before the second-highest court in Oregon, could take months to resolve - years if it goes to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Weber said she still holds out hope that she might once again compete in interscholastic sports. She competed on Oakridge High School's track and basketball teams her freshman year and had earned a spot on its volleyball team as a sophomore when her refusal to consent to random drug testing cost her a chance to remain on the squad.

She also was barred from other school sports unless she agreed to sign a consent form.

Before she can return to interscholastic athletics, the courts would have to uphold her contention that random drug testing, not based on any suspicion, amounts to an unconstitutional violation of her privacy.

The teen-ager filed the case in fall 2000 with parents Sharon and John Weber and the help of the American Civil Liberties Union. Before taking on the lawsuit, she said ACLU officials told her that a ruling might not come until after she's finished with school.

Still, Weber said she's willing to give up the chance to return to high school athletics to take a stand.

"When they told us it could take us two to five years, I was hoping it would be more on the two-year end. I really want to play," she said outside the proceedings.

Her parents didn't push her into the suit, she said, and have constantly offered support if she wants to give up the fight. ``They ask me every single day, it seems like, `Are you sure you want to keep doing it?' I'm going to stay, with their support,'' Weber said.

The Oakridge district's policy requires any student who wants to participate in school sports to consent in writing to random urinalysis to check for illicit drugs. Parents also must give written consent.

Oakridge's testing policy was drawn up as part of an Oregon Health & Science University study to determine the effectiveness of drug-testing programs. The three-year, $3.6 million study involves 13 high schools and uses a version of the U.S. Olympic Committee's random drug-testing program.

When she filed the suit as a sophomore, Weber was "by all accounts, a model student," according to a legal brief by her lawyer, Tom Christ. She had made the scholastic honor roll and took part in several extracurricular activities, including serving as the student representative on the Oakridge School Board.

The Webers sued the district in Lane County Circuit Court. Judge Lyle Velure last spring upheld the Oakridge district's policy.

The Oregon Constitution doesn't prohibit suspicion-free drug testing, Velure ruled, provided that students aren't required to disclose their prescription medications to explain a positive test result.

In the second of his two rulings on the case, Velure concluded that a student isn't entitled to damages under the section of the state constitution cited by the Webers. Their original suit seeks $200,000.

Oakridge School District officials have defended the policy as an important part of their effort to curb drug- and alcohol-related accidents.

Shortly after the policy was adopted, school board Chairman Curtis Dornath, an Oregon State Police sergeant, said he personally had investigated five such crashes that killed four students or recent graduates of Oakridge High School.

Oakridge's superintendent, Larry Horton, released a statement Monday, saying: "With the support of the community, the school board adopted a drug-testing policy to protect the health and safety of student athletes. The district is hopeful that the Court of Appeals will affirm the trial court's decision to uphold the policy."

The district's lawyer, Tim Volpert, argued before the court that the district is on sound legal ground.

The courts must enforce constitutional protections against unreasonable criminal searches, but students don't have the same protections, he said. And students aren't subjected to punishment, other than restriction from voluntary participation in sports, he said. In addition, Volpert said, the courts must balance the value of privacy protections against the benefit to society - in this case the protection of Oakridge and its youths from the hazards of illicit drug use.

A similar challenge against another Oregon school district in Vernonia wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in 1995 that random drug testing of student athletes doesn't violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

Unlike the Vernonia federal case, Weber's case went to the state courts because it asserts that the Oregon Constitution provides residents with greater privacy protection against government search and seizure than that provided by the Fourth Amendment.

Christ argued that Oregon courts have resisted the approach taken by U.S. courts to weaken Fourth Amendment protections in an attempt to balance personal freedoms vs. public protections.

He urged the appeal judges to continue to view protection from unreasonable searches as a fundamental right that shouldn't be undermined by "suspicionless searches."

The Oregon Supreme Court "has a long history of construing the state constitution independently from the U.S. Constitution," he said. "And we're hopeful that they'll continue that in this case."