Some parents and students at the Nov. 17, 2025 Pershing County School Board meeting questioned why only athletes and students in extracurricular activities are subject to random drug testing, while the rest of the student body is not.
Board attorney and Pershing County District Attorney, Brice Shields, said the answer lies in federal case law. According to Shields, “There's a Supreme Court case that mandates that students who participated in extracurricular activities can be drug tested. Students who are not participating in extracurricular activities, the school has no business testing them.”
In a pair of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1990s and early 2000s, justices ruled that public schools may require drug tests for students who choose to participate in certain voluntary activities.
In Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton (1995), the Court upheld random drug testing for student athletes, finding that athletes already accept a greater level of regulation and that the district had documented concerns about student drug use. Later, in Board of Education v. Earls (2002), the Court extended that reasoning to include students in competitive extracurricular activities such as choir, band, and academic teams.
Those rulings allow schools to test athletes and activity participants without individual suspicion. They do not clearly authorize random testing of all students. Testing the entire student body without cause would raise significant Fourth Amendment concerns about unreasonable searches, and districts are generally advised against it.
Locally, that means Pershing County can test students who sign up for sports or certain activities but does not have the same legal footing to require blanket testing of every student.
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