At Susquenita Middle School in Duncannon, Pa., a community 20 minutes north of Harrisburg, an eighth‐​grader chose to skip the National Junior Honor Society this year, reports Eric Veronikis at PennLive:



Leila May was drug‐​tested once during her fifth grade year, once in sixth grade and three times as a seventh grader because Susquenita School District randomly tests students in grades five through 12 who participate in extracurricular activities and apply for parking permits.

She always tested negative but her parents have tired of the intrusion and embarrassment and her mother Melinda says they’re weren’t willing to sign another consent form. “It’s sad that this is what we had to resort to. It’s ridiculous.”





Twelve years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Board of Education v. Earls (2002) that schools generally have discretion to impose drug testing on participants in extracurricular activities even without particularized suspicion, on the grounds that such activities are voluntary. It declined to follow an amicus brief in which the Cato Institute and other groups had argued that random suspicionless searches in this instance amount a Fourth Amendment violation, and pointed out that kids who join academic honors groups appear less prone to engage in drug abuse than their peers, not more. Instead the Court extended the reach of a 1995 precedent, Vernonia School Dist. v. Acton, which had approved a similar regime for high school athletes.





Even if the courts will not restrain the Susquenita district, common sense should. Stop the madness and let kids be kids.