School Random Drug Permissible. Joye v. Hunterdon Central Board of Education ___ NJ ___ A-27-2002 (July 9, 2003)

The school board’s random drug and alcohol testing program is permissible under Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution. Defendant-school board’s program of random, suspiciousless drug and alcohol testing of property, which is plainly constitutional under federal law, is permissible under Article I, paragraph 7 of the New Jersey Constitution, and the Appellate Division opinion upholding the program is affirmed; the high school has demonstrated that there is a substance-abuse problem among its students, thus establishing a special need o justify the privacy intrusions here without individualized suspicion, the program serves no direct law-enforcement need, since students who test positive are not reported to law-enforcement officials, school officials have a duty to maintain order and students have a diminished expectation of privacy in a public-school context, and the program is reasonable since the method of collecting urine samples limits the intrusion on the students’ privacy interests and protects their personal dignity to the extent possible under the circumstances (and, it is expected, will be supplanted by less intrusive swabs of the mouth), and defendant reasonably tailored its program to meet the scope and nature of the then-existing problem; Odenheim v. Carlstadt-East Rutherford Regional School District is overruled to the extent that it is inconsistent with this opinion.