High Court Hears Challenge to Drug Test

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court justices looked out to the frontiers of the war on drugs Tuesday and saw standing before them a soft-spoken, gentlemanly Georgian who resists taking a urine test required to run for state office.

“This is another attempted expansion of the government’s power and for purely symbolic purposes,” Walker L. Chandler, an unsuccessful Libertarian Party candidate for lieutenant governor, told the justices.

In recent years, the high court has upheld mandatory drug tests for train engineers, airline pilots and customs agents on grounds that their jobs involve public safety or drugs themselves. But Chandler’s case may mark the outer perimeter of what is acceptable.

Georgia is the only state to require drug tests to get on the ballot and a state attorney admitted that the law was passed even though no one really thinks that the state’s politicians are drug addicts.

After submitting a clean sample, Chandler challenged the requirement as an unconstitutional and unreasonable search in violation of the 4th Amendment.

“We had no choice but to submit to this suspicionless search,” he said of his fellow Libertarian candidates.

Most of the justices sounded skeptical of the state rule.

“What is the special need in Georgia” for the drug-test requirement, asked Justice Sandra Day O’Connor insistently. “Is there any evidence of state officers who had drug problems?”

“To be frank, there is no such problem,” replied Assistant Atty. Gen. Patricia Guilday. In its brief to the court, Georgia cited as an example an out-of-state case--the 1990 conviction on cocaine possession charges of Washington Mayor Marion Barry.

While Georgia has not found drug users among its candidates, Guilday said, it is important to make clear that “state office holders are held to a much higher standard than an ordinary citizen.”

“What is the state doing then other than making a political statement?” asked Justice Stephen G. Breyer.

It is unusual for a litigant to argue his own case in the Supreme Court, and Chandler conceded that he is no expert on constitutional law.

On several occasions, he quietly answered, “I don’t know,” in response to questioning from the bench.

While his manner was restrained in the courtroom, he issued a statement describing the drug-testing measure as “an asinine law.” There is no test for alcoholism, which is “the worst problem among politicians,” he said. “And there’s no test for intelligence. Or ethics.”

The ruling in the case (Chandler vs. Miller, 96-126) can be expected by June.