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Authors ›› Thomas
[T]he Cooperative asserts that, shorn of a medical necessity defense, the statute exceeds Congress' Commerce Clause powers, violates the substantive due process rights of patients, and offends the fundamental liberties of the people under the Fifth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments. [...] [W]e [do not] consider the underlying constitutional issues today. Because the Court of Appeals did not address these claims, we decline to do so in the first instance.
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The Court [does] not simply authorize all school drug testing, but rather conduct[s] a fact-specific balancing of the intrusion on the children's Fourth Amendment rights against the promotion of legitimate governmental interests.
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This Court has already articulated in detail the importance of the governmental concern in preventing drug use by schoolchildren. The drug abuse problem among our Nation's youth has hardly abated... [...] In fact, evidence suggests that it has only grown worse. [...] "[T]he necessity for the State to act is magnified by the fact that this evil is being visited not just upon individuals at large, but upon children for whom it has undertaken a special responsibility of care and direction." [...] Indeed, the nationwide drug epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in every school.
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[T]his Court has not required a particularized or pervasive drug problem before allowing the government to conduct suspicionless drug testing.
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...[T]he need to prevent and deter the substantial harm of childhood drug use provides the necessary immediacy for a school testing policy. Indeed, it would make little sense to require a school district to wait for a substantial portion of its students to begin using drugs before it was allowed to institute a drug testing program designed to deter drug use.
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