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Affecting Eternity: The Court's Confused Lesson In Board Of Education V. Earls, George M. Dery Iii

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

In Board of Education v. Earls, the US. Supreme Court found the random drug testing of schoolchildren who participated in extracurricular activities to be reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In this Article, Professor Dery argues that this latest extension of the special needs doctrine is both patronizing to student privacy interests and inconsistent with the Court's previous limitation of suspicionless searches in New Jersey v. T.L.O. and Chandler v. Miller. Professor Dery criticizes the Court's Earls decision as a confused lesson in constitutional law, abandoning the very fundamentals of the Fourth Amendment.