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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
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No. 94-590
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VERNONIA SCHOOL DISTRICT 47J, PETITIONER
v. WAYNE ACTON, et ux., etc.
on writ of certiorari to the united states court
of appeals for the ninth circuit
[June 26, 1995]

  Justice O'Connor, with whom Justice Stevens and
Justice Souter join, dissenting.
  The population of our Nation's public schools, grades
7 through 12, numbers around 18 million.  See U. S.
Dept. of Education, National Center for Education
Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics 58 (1994) (Table
43).  By the reasoning of today's decision, the millions
of these students who participate in interscholastic
sports, an overwhelming majority of whom have given
school officials no reason whatsoever to suspect they use
drugs at school, are open to an intrusive bodily search.
  In justifying this result, the Court dispenses with a
requirement of individualized suspicion on considered
policy grounds.  First, it explains that precisely because
every student athlete is being tested, there is no concern
that school officials might act arbitrarily in choosing who
to test.  Second, a broad-based search regime, the Court
reasons, dilutes the accusatory nature of the search.  In
making these policy arguments, of course, the Court
sidesteps powerful, countervailing privacy concerns.
Blanket searches, because they can involve -thousands
or millions- of searches, -pos[e] a greater threat to
liberty- than do suspicion-based ones, which -affec[t] one
person at a time,- Illinois v. Krull, 480 U. S. 340, 365
(1987) (O'Connor, J., dissenting).  Searches based on
individualized suspicion also afford potential targets
considerable control over whether they will, in fact, be
searched because a person can avoid such a search by
not acting in an objectively suspicious way.  And given
that the surest way to avoid acting suspiciously is to
avoid the underlying wrongdoing, the costs of such a
regime, one would think, are minimal.
  But whether a blanket search is -better,- ante, at 18,
than a regime based on individualized suspicion is not
a debate in which we should engage.  In my view, it is
not open to judges or government officials to decide on
policy grounds which is better and which is worse.  For
most of our constitutional history, mass, suspicionless
searches have been generally considered per se unreason-
able within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.
And we have allowed exceptions in recent years only
where it has been clear that a suspicion-based regime
would be ineffectual.  Because that is not the case here,
I dissent.

                            I
                            A
  In Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S. 132 (1925), the
Court explained that -[t]he Fourth Amendment does not
denounce all searches or seizures, but only such as are
unreasonable.-  Id., at 147.  Applying this standard, the
Court first held that a search of a car was not unrea-
sonable merely because it was warrantless; because
obtaining a warrant is impractical for an easily movable
object such as a car, the Court explained, a warrant is
not required.  The Court also held, however, that a
warrantless car search was unreasonable unless sup-
ported by some level of individualized suspicion, namely
probable cause.  Significantly, the Court did not base its
conclusion on the express probable cause requirement
contained in the Warrant Clause, which, as just noted,
the Court found inapplicable.  Rather, the Court rested
its views on -what was deemed an unreasonable search
and seizure when [the Fourth Amendment] was adopted-
and -[what] will conserve public interests as well as the
interests and rights of individual citizens.-  Id., at 149.
With respect to the -rights of individual citizens,- the
Court eventually offered the simple yet powerful intu-
ition that -those lawfully within the country, entitled to
use the public highways, have a right to free passage
without interruption or search unless there is known to
a competent official authorized to search, probable cause
for believing that their vehicles are carrying contraband
or illegal merchandise.-  Id., at 154.
  More important for the purposes of this case,
the Court clearly indicated that evenhanded treatment
was no substitute for the individualized suspicion
requirement:
-It would be intolerable and unreasonable if a
prohibition agent were authorized to stop every
automobile on the chance of finding liquor and thus
subject all persons lawfully using the highways to
the inconvenience and indignity of such a search.-
Id., at 153-154.
  The Carroll Court's view that blanket searches are
-intolerable and unreasonable- is well-grounded in
history.  As recently confirmed in one of the most
exhaustive analyses of the original meaning of the
Fourth Amendment ever undertaken, see W. Cuddihy,
The Fourth Amendment: Origins and Original Meaning
(1990) (Ph.D. Dissertation at Claremont Graduate
School) (hereinafter Cuddihy), what the Framers of the
Fourth Amendment most strongly opposed, with limited
exceptions wholly inapplicable here, were general
searches-that is, searches by general warrant, by writ
of assistance, by broad statute, or by any other similar
authority.  See id., at 1402, 1499, 1555; see also Clancy,
The Role of Individualized Suspicion in Assessing the
Reasonableness of Searches and Seizures, 25 Mem. St.
U. L. Rev. 483, 528 (1994); Maclin, When the Cure for
the Fourth Amendment Is Worse Than the Disease, 68
S. Cal. L. Rev. 1, 9-12 (1994); L. Levy, Original Intent
and the Framers' Constitution 221-246 (1988).  Al-
though, ironically, such warrants, writs, and statutes
typically required individualized suspicion, see, e.g., Cud-
dihy 1140 (-Typical of the American warrants of 1761-76
was Starke's `tobacco' warrant, which commanded its
bearer to `enter any suspected Houses'-) (emphasis
added), such requirements were subjective and largely
unenforceable.  Accordingly, these various forms of
authority led in practice to -virtually unrestrained,- and
hence -general,- searches.  J. Landynski, Search and
Seizure and the Supreme Court 20 (1966).  To be sure,
the Fourth Amendment, in the Warrant Clause, prohib-
its by name only searches by general warrants.  But
that was only because the abuses of the general warrant
were particularly vivid in the minds of the Framers'
generation, Cuddihy 1554-1560, and not because the
Framers viewed other kinds of general searches as any
less unreasonable.  -Prohibition of the general warrant
was part of a larger scheme to extinguish general
searches categorically.-  Id., at 1499.
  More important, there is no indication in the historical
materials that the Framers' opposition to general
searches stemmed solely from the fact that they allowed
officials to single out individuals for arbitrary reasons,
and thus that officials could render them reasonable
simply by making sure to extend their search to every
house in a given area or to every person in a given
group.  See Delaware v. Prouse, 440 U. S. 648, 664
(1979) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (referring to this as
the -`misery loves company'- theory of the Fourth
Amendment).  On the contrary, although general
searches were typically arbitrary, they were not invari-
ably so.  Some general searches, for example, were of
the arguably evenhanded -door-to-door- kind.  Cuddihy
1091; see also id., at 377, 1502, 1557.  Indeed, Cuddihy's
descriptions of a few blanket searches suggests they may
have been considered more worrisome than the typical
general search.  See id., at 575 (-One type of warrant
[between 1700 and 1760] went beyond a general search,
in which the searcher entered and inspected suspicious
places, by requiring him to search entire categories of
places whether he suspected them or not-); id., at 478
(-During the exigencies of Queen Anne's War, two
colonies even authorized searches in 1706 that extended
to entire geographic areas, not just to suspicious houses
in a district, as conventional general warrants allowed-).
  Perhaps most telling of all, as reflected in the text of
the Warrant Clause, the particular way the Framers
chose to curb the abuses of general warrants-and by
implication, all general searches-was not to impose a
novel -evenhandedness- requirement; it was to retain the
individualized suspicion requirement contained in the
typical general warrant, but to make that requirement
meaningful and enforceable, for instance, by raising the
required level of individualized suspicion to objective
probable cause.  See U. S. Const., Amdt. 4.  So, for
example, when the same Congress that proposed the
Fourth Amendment authorized duty collectors to search
for concealed goods subject to import duties, specific
warrants were required for searches on land; but even
for searches at sea, where warrants were impractical
and thus not required, Congress nonetheless limited
officials to searching only those ships and vessels -in
which [a collector] shall have reason to suspect any
goods, wares or merchandise subject to duty shall be
concealed.-  The Collection Act of July 31, 1789, 24, 1
Stat. 43 (emphasis added); see also Cuddihy 1490-1491
(-The Collection Act of 1789 was [the] most significant
[of all early search statutes], for it identified the
techniques of search and seizure that the framers of the
amendment believed reasonable while they were framing
it-).  Not surprisingly, the Carroll Court relied on this
statute and other subsequent ones like it in arriving at
its views.  See Carroll, 267 U. S., at 150-151, 154; cf.
Clancy, supra, at 489 (-While the plain language of the
Amendment does not mandate individualized suspicion
as a necessary component of all searches and seizures,
the historical record demonstrates that the framers
believed that individualized suspicion was an inherent
quality of reasonable searches and seizures-).
  True, not all searches around the time the Fourth
Amendment was adopted required individualized suspi-
cion-although most did.  A search incident to arrest
was an obvious example of one that did not, see
Cuddihy 1518, but even those searches shared the
essential characteristics that distinguish suspicion-
based searches from abusive general searches: they
only -affec[t] one person at a time,- Krull, 480
U. S., at 365 (O'Connor, J., dissenting), and they are
generally avoidable by refraining from wrongdoing.  See
supra, at 1-2.  Protection of privacy, not evenhanded-
ness, was then and is now the touchstone of the Fourth
Amendment.
  The view that mass, suspicionless searches, however
evenhanded, are generally unreasonable remains invio-
late in the criminal law enforcement context, see Ybarra
v. Illinois, 444 U. S. 85 (1979) (invalidating evenhanded,
nonaccusatory patdown for weapons of all patrons in a
tavern in which there was probable cause to think drug
dealing was going on), at least where the search is more
than minimally intrusive, see Michigan Dept. of State
Police v. Sitz, 496 U. S. 444 (1990) (upholding the brief
and easily avoidable detention, for purposes of observing
signs of intoxication, of all motorists approaching a
roadblock).  It is worth noting in this regard that state-
compelled, state-monitored collection and testing of
urine, while perhaps not the most intrusive of searches,
see, e. g., Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520, 558-560 (1979)
(visual body cavity searches), is still -particularly
destructive of privacy and offensive to personal dignity.-
Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U. S. 656, 680
(1989) (Scalia, J., dissenting); see also ante, at 11;
Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 U. S.
602, 617 (1989).  We have not hesitated to treat moni-
tored bowel movements as highly intrusive (even in the
special border search context), compare United States v.
Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543 (1976) (brief interrogative
stops of all motorists crossing certain border checkpoint
reasonable without individualized suspicion), with United
States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U. S. 531 (1985)
(monitored bowel movement of border crossers reason-
able only upon reasonable suspicion of alimentary canal
smuggling), and it is not easy to draw a distinction.  See
Fried, Privacy, 77 Yale L. J. 475, 487 (1968) (-[I]n our
culture the excretory functions are shielded by more or
less absolute privacy-).  And certainly monitored urina-
tion combined with urine testing is more intrusive than
some personal searches we have said trigger Fourth
Amendment protections in the past.  See, e. g., Cupp v.
Murphy, 412 U. S. 291, 295 (1973) (Stewart, J.) (charac-
terizing the scraping of dirt from under a person's
fingernails as a -`severe, though brief, intrusion upon
cherished personal security'-).  Finally, the collection and
testing of urine is, of course, a search of a person, one
of only four categories of suspect searches the Constitu-
tion mentions by name.  See U. S. Const., Amdt. 4
(listing -persons, houses, papers, and effects-); cf.
Cuddihy 835, 1518, 1552, n. 394 (indicating long history
of outrage at personal searches before 1789).
  Thus, it remains the law that the police cannot, say,
subject to drug testing every person entering or leaving
a certain drug-ridden neighborhood in order to find
evidence of crime.  3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure
9.5(b), pp. 551-553 (2d ed. 1987) (hereinafter LaFave).
And this is true even though it is hard to think of a
more compelling government interest than the need to
fight the scourge of drugs on our streets and in our
neighborhoods.  Nor could it be otherwise, for if being
evenhanded were enough to justify evaluating a search
regime under an open-ended balancing test, the Warrant
Clause, which presupposes that there is some category
of searches for which individualized suspicion is non-
negotiable, see 2 LaFave 4.1, at 118, would be a dead
letter.
  Outside the criminal context, however, in response to
the exigencies of modern life, our cases have upheld
several evenhanded blanket searches, including some
that are more than minimally intrusive, after balancing
the invasion of privacy against the government's strong
need.  Most of these cases, of course, are distinguishable
insofar as they involved searches either not of a person-
ally intrusive nature, such as searches of closely regu-
lated businesses, see, e. g., New York v. Burger, 482
U. S. 691, 699-703 (1987); cf. Cuddihy 1501 (-Even the
states with the strongest constitutional restrictions on
general searches had long exposed commercial establish-
ments to warrantless inspection-), or arising in unique
contexts such as prisons, see, e. g., Wolfish, supra, at
558-560 (visual body cavity searches of prisoners
following contact visits); cf. Cuddihy 1516-1519,
1552-1553 (indicating that searches incident to arrest
and prisoner searches were the only common personal
searches at time of founding).  This certainly explains
why Justice Scalia, in his dissent in our recent Von
Raab decision, found it significant that -[u]ntil today
this Court had upheld a bodily search separate from
arrest and without individualized suspicion of wrong-do-
ing only with respect to prison inmates, relying upon the
uniquely dangerous nature of that environment.-  Von
Raab, supra, at 680 (citation omitted).
  In any event, in many of the cases that can be
distinguished on the grounds suggested above and, more
important, in all of the cases that cannot, see, e.g.,
Skinner, supra (blanket drug testing scheme); Von Raab,
supra (same); cf. Camara v. Municipal Court of San
Francisco, 387 U. S. 523 (1967) (area-wide searches of
private residences), we upheld the suspicionless search
only after first recognizing the Fourth Amendment's
longstanding preference for a suspicion-based search
regime, and then pointing to sound reasons why such a
regime would likely be ineffectual under the unusual
circumstances presented.  In Skinner, for example, we
stated outright that -`some quantum of individualized
suspicion'- is -usually required- under the Fourth
Amendment, Skinner, supra, at 624, quoting Martinez-
Fuerte, 428 U. S., at 560, and we built the requirement
into the test we announced: -In limited circumstances,
where the privacy interests implicated by the search are
minimal, and where an important governmental interest
furthered by the intrusion would be placed in jeopardy
by a requirement of individualized suspicion, a search
may be reasonable despite the absence of such suspi-
cion.-  Ibid. (emphasis added).  The obvious negative
implication of this reasoning is that, if such an individu-
alized suspicion requirement would not place the
government's objectives in jeopardy, the requirement
should not be forsaken.  See also Von Raab, supra, at
665-666.
  Accordingly, we upheld the suspicionless regime at
issue in Skinner on the firm understanding that a
requirement of individualized suspicion for testing train
operators for drug or alcohol impairment following
serious train accidents would be unworkable because
-the scene of a serious rail accident is chaotic.-  Skinner,
489 U. S., at 631.  (Of course, it could be plausibly
argued that the fact that testing occurred only after
train operators were involved in serious train accidents
amounted to an individualized suspicion requirement in
all but name, in light of the record evidence of a strong
link between serious train accidents and drug and
alcohol use.)  We have performed a similar inquiry in
the other cases as well.  See Von Raab, supra, at 674
(suspicion requirement for searches of customs officials
for drug impairment impractical because -not feasible to
subject [such] employees and their work product to the
kind of day-to-day scrutiny that is the norm in more
traditional office environments-); Camara, supra, at 537
(suspicion requirement for searches of homes for safety
code violations impractical because conditions such as
-faulty wiring- not observable from outside of house); see
also Wolfish, 441 U. S., at 559, n. 40 (suspicion require-
ment for searches of prisoners for smuggling following
contact visits impractical because observation necessary
to gain suspicion would cause -obvious disruption of the
confidentiality and intimacy that these visits are
intended to afford-); Martinez-Fuerte, supra, at 557 (-A
requirement that stops on major routes inland always be
based on reasonable suspicion would be impractical
because the flow of traffic tends to be too heavy to allow
the particularized study of a given car that would enable
it to be identified as a possible carrier of illegal aliens-);
United States v. Edwards, 498 F. 2d 496, 500 (CA2
1974) (Friendly, J.) (suspicion-based searches of airport
passengers' carry-on luggage impractical because of the
great number of plane travelers and -conceded inapplica-
bility- of the profile method of detecting hijackers).
  Moreover, an individualized suspicion requirement was
often impractical in these cases because they involved
situations in which even one undetected instance of
wrongdoing could have injurious consequences for a
great number of people.  See, e.g., Camara, supra, at
535 (even one safety code violation can cause -fires and
epidemics [that] ravage large urban areas-); Skinner,
supra, at 628 (even one drug- or alcohol-impaired train
operator can lead to the -disastrous consequences- of a
train wreck, such as -great human loss-); Von Raab,
supra, at 670, 674, 677 (even one customs official caught
up in drugs can, by virtue of impairment, susceptibility
to bribes, or indifference, result in the noninterdiction of
a -sizable drug shipmen[t],- which eventually injures the
lives of thousands, or to a breach of -national security-);
Edwards, supra, at 500 (even one hijacked airplane can
destroy -`hundreds of human lives and millions of
dollars of property'-).

                            B
  The instant case stands in marked contrast.  One
searches today's majority opinion in vain for recognition
that history and precedent establish that individualized
suspicion is -usually required- under the Fourth Amend-
ment (regardless of whether a warrant and probable
cause are also required) and that, in the area of intru-
sive personal searches, the only recognized exception is
for situations in which a suspicion-based scheme would
be likely ineffectual.  See supra, at 9-10.  Far from
acknowledging anything special about individualized
suspicion, the Court treats a suspicion-based regime as
if it were just any run-of-the-mill, less intrusive alterna-
tive-that is, an alternative that officials may bypass if
the lesser intrusion, in their reasonable estimation, is
outweighed by policy concerns unrelated to practicability.
  As an initial matter, I have serious doubts whether
the Court is right that the District reasonably found
that the lesser intrusion of a suspicion-based testing
program outweighed its genuine concerns for the
adversarial nature of such a program, and for its abuses.
See ante, at 17-18.  For one thing, there are significant
safeguards against abuses.  The fear that a suspicion-
based regime will lead to the testing of -troublesome but
not drug-likely- students, id., at 17, for example, ignores
that the required level of suspicion in the school context
is objectively reasonable suspicion.  In this respect, the
facts of our decision in New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S.
325 (1985), should be reassuring.  There, we found
reasonable suspicion to search a ninth-grade girl's purse
for cigarettes after a teacher caught the girl smoking in
the bathroom with a companion who admitted it.  See
id., at 328, 345-346.  Moreover, any distress arising
from what turns out to be a false accusation can be
minimized by keeping the entire process confidential.
  For another thing, the District's concern for the ad-
versarial nature of a suspicion-based regime (which
appears to extend even to those who are rightly accused)
seems to ignore the fact that such a regime would not
exist in a vacuum.  Schools already have adversarial,
disciplinary schemes that require teachers and adminis-
trators in many areas besides drug use to investigate
student wrongdoing (often by means of accusatory
searches); to make determinations about whether the
wrongdoing occurred; and to impose punishment.  To
such a scheme, suspicion-based drug testing would be
only a minor addition.  The District's own elaborate
disciplinary scheme is reflected in its handbook, which,
among other things, lists the following disciplinary
-problem areas- carrying serious sanctions: -DEFIANCE
OF AUTHORITY,- -DISORDERLY OR DISRUPTIVE
CONDUCT INCLUDING FOUL LANGUAGE,- -AUTO-
MOBILE USE OR MISUSE,- -FORGERY OR LYING,-
-GAMBLING,- -THEFT,- -TOBACCO,- -MISCHIEF,-
-VANDALISM,- -RECKLESSLY ENDANGERING,-
-MENACING OR HARASSMENT,- -ASSAULT,- -FIGHT-
ING,- -WEAPONS,- -EXTORTION,- -EXPLOSIVE
DEVICES,- and -ARSON.-  Record, Exh. 2, p. 11; see
also id., at 20-21 (listing rules regulating dress and
grooming, public displays of affection, and the wearing
of hats inside); cf. id., at 8 (-RESPONSIBILITIES OF
SCHOOLS- include -To develop and distribute to parents
and students reasonable rules and regulations governing
student behavior and attendance- and -To provide fair
and reasonable standards of conduct and to enforce
those standards through appropriate disciplinary ac-
tion-).  The high number of disciplinary referrals in the
record in this case illustrates the District's robust
scheme in action.
  In addition to overstating its concerns with a suspi-
cion-based program, the District seems to have under-
stated the extent to which such a program is less intru-
sive of students' privacy.  By invading the privacy of a
few students rather than many (nationwide, of thou-
sands rather than millions), and by giving potential
search targets substantial control over whether they will,
in fact, be searched, a suspicion-based scheme is
significantly less intrusive.
  In any event, whether the Court is right that the
District reasonably weighed the lesser intrusion of a
suspicion-based scheme against its policy concerns is
beside the point.  As stated, a suspicion-based search
regime is not just any less intrusive alternative; the
individualized suspicion requirement has a legal pedigree
as old as the Fourth Amendment itself, and it may not
be easily cast aside in the name of policy concerns.  It
may only be forsaken, our cases in the personal search
context have established, if a suspicion-based regime
would likely be ineffectual.
  But having misconstrued the fundamental role of the
individualized suspicion requirement in Fourth Amend-
ment analysis, the Court never seriously engages the
practicality of such a requirement in the instant case.
And that failure is crucial because nowhere is it less
clear that an individualized suspicion requirement would
be ineffectual than in the school context.  In most
schools, the entire pool of potential search
targets-students-is under constant supervision by
teachers and administrators and coaches, be it in
classrooms, hallways, or locker rooms.  See T. L. O., 469
U. S., at 339 (-[A] proper educational environment
requires close supervision of schoolchildren-).
  The record here indicates that the Vernonia schools
are no exception.  The great irony of this case is that
most (though not all) of the evidence the District
introduced to justify its suspicionless drug-testing
program consisted of first- or second-hand stories of
particular, identifiable students acting in ways that
plainly gave rise to reasonable suspicion of in-school
drug use-and thus that would have justified a drug-
related search under our T. L. O. decision.  See id., at
340-342 (warrant and probable cause not required for
school searches; reasonable suspicion sufficient).  Small
groups of students, for example, were observed by a
teacher -passing joints back and forth- across the street
at a restaurant before school and during school hours.
Tr. 67 (Apr. 29, 1992).  Another group was caught
skipping school and using drugs at one of the students'
houses.  See id., at 93-94.  Several students actually
admitted their drug use to school officials (some of them
being caught with marijuana pipes).  See id., at 24.
One student presented himself to his teacher as -clearly
obviously inebriated- and had to be sent home.  Id., at
68.  Still another was observed dancing and singing at
the top of his voice in the back of the classroom; when
the teacher asked what was going on, he replied, -Well,
I'm just high on life.-  Id., at 89-90.  To take a final
example, on a certain road trip, the school wrestling
coach smelled marijuana smoke in a hotel room occupied
by four wrestlers, see id., at 110-112, an observation
that (after some questioning) would probably have given
him reasonable suspicion to test one or all of them.  Cf.
4 LaFave 10.11(b), at 169 (-[I]n most instances the evi-
dence of wrongdoing prompting teachers or principals to
conduct searches is sufficiently detailed and specific to
meet the traditional probable cause test-).
  In light of all this evidence of drug use by particular
students, there is a substantial basis for concluding that
a vigorous regime of suspicion-based testing (for which
the District appears already to have rules in place, see
Record, Exh. 2, at 14, 17) would have gone a long way
toward solving Vernonia's school drug problem while
preserving the Fourth Amendment rights of James Acton
and others like him.  And were there any doubt about
such a conclusion, it is removed by indications in the
record that suspicion-based testing could have been
supplemented by an equally vigorous campaign to have
Vernonia's parents encourage their children to submit to
the District's voluntary drug testing program.  See id.,
at 32 (describing the voluntary program); ante, at 19
(noting widespread parental support for drug testing).
In these circumstances, the Fourth Amendment dictates
that a mass, suspicionless search regime is categorically
unreasonable.
  I recognize that a suspicion-based scheme, even where
reasonably effective in controlling in-school drug use,
may not be as effective as a mass, suspicionless testing
regime.  In one sense, that is obviously true-just as it
is obviously true that suspicion-based law enforcement
is not as effective as mass, suspicionless enforcement
might be.  -But there is nothing new in the realization-
that Fourth Amendment protections come with a price.
Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U. S. 321, 329 (1987).  Indeed, the
price we pay is higher in the criminal context, given
that police do not closely observe the entire class of
potential search targets (all citizens in the area) and
must ordinarily adhere to the rigid requirements of a
warrant and probable cause.
  The principal counterargument to all this, central to
the Court's opinion, is that the Fourth Amendment is
more lenient with respect to school searches.  That is no
doubt correct, for, as the Court explains, ante, at 8-10,
schools have traditionally had special guardian-like
responsibilities for children that necessitate a degree of
constitutional leeway.  This principle explains the
considerable Fourth Amendment leeway we gave school
officials in T. L. O.  In that case, we held that children
at school do not enjoy two of the Fourth Amendment's
traditional categorical protections against unreasonable
searches and seizures: the warrant requirement and the
probable cause requirement.  See T. L. O., 469 U. S., at
337-343.  And this was true even though the same
children enjoy such protections -in a nonschool setting.-
Id., at 348 (Powell, J., concurring).
  The instant case, however, asks whether the Fourth
Amendment is even more lenient than that, i.e., whether
it is so lenient that students may be deprived of the
Fourth Amendment's only remaining, and most basic,
categorical protection: its strong preference for an
individualized suspicion requirement, with its accompa-
nying antipathy toward personally intrusive, blanket
searches of mostly innocent people.  It is not at all clear
that people in prison lack this categorical protection, see
Wolfish, 441 U. S., at 558-560 (upholding certain
suspicionless searches of prison inmates); but cf. supra,
at 10 (indicating why suspicion requirement was imprac-
tical in Wolfish), and we have said -we are not yet ready
to hold that the schools and the prisons need be equated
for purposes of the Fourth Amendment.-  T. L. O.,
supra, at 338-339.  Thus, if we are to mean what we
often proclaim-that students do not -shed their consti-
tutional rights . . . at the schoolhouse gate,- Tinker v.
Des Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393
U. S. 503, 506 (1969)-the answer must plainly be no.
  For the contrary position, the Court relies on cases
such as T. L. O., Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U. S. 651
(1977), and Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565 (1975).  See
ante, at 8-10.  But I find the Court's reliance on these
cases ironic.  If anything, they affirm that schools have
substantial constitutional leeway in carrying out their
traditional mission of responding to particularized
wrongdoing.  See T. L. O., supra (leeway in investigating
particularized wrongdoing); Ingraham, supra (leeway in
punishing particularized wrongdoing); Goss, supra
(leeway in choosing procedures by which particularized
wrongdoing is punished).
  By contrast, intrusive, blanket searches of school
children, most of whom are innocent, for evidence of
serious wrongdoing are not part of any traditional school
function of which I am aware.  Indeed, many schools,
like many parents, prefer to trust their children unless
given reason to do otherwise.  As James Acton's father
said on the witness stand, -[suspicionless testing] sends
a message to children that are trying to be responsible
citizens . . . that they have to prove that they're
innocent . . . , and I think that kind of sets a bad tone
for citizenship.-  Tr. 9 (Apr. 29, 1992).
  I find unpersuasive the Court's reliance, ante, at 10,
on the widespread practice of physical examinations and
vaccinations, which are both blanket searches of a sort.
Of course, for these practices to have any Fourth
Amendment significance, the Court has to assume that
these physical exams and vaccinations are typically
-required- to a similar extent that urine testing and
collection is required in the instant case, i.e., that they
are required regardless of parental objection and that
some meaningful sanction attaches to the failure to
submit.  In any event, without forming any particular
view of such searches, it is worth noting that a suspi-
cion requirement for vaccinations is not merely impracti-
cal; it is nonsensical, for vaccinations are not searches
for anything in particular and so there is nothing about
which to be suspicious.  Nor is this saying anything
new; it is the same theory on which, in part, we have
repeatedly upheld certain inventory searches.  See, e.g.,
South Dakota v. Opperman, 428 U. S. 364, 370, n. 5
(1976) (-The probable-cause approach is unhelpful when
analysis centers upon the reasonableness of routine
administrative caretaking functions-).  As for physical
examinations, the practicability of a suspicion require-
ment is highly doubtful because the conditions for which
these physical exams ordinarily search, such as latent
heart conditions, do not manifest themselves in observ-
able behavior the way school drug use does.  See supra,
at 14.
  It might also be noted that physical exams (and of
course vaccinations) are not searches for conditions that
reflect wrongdoing on the part of the student, and so are
wholly nonaccusatory and have no consequences that can
be regarded as punitive.  These facts may explain the
absence of Fourth Amendment challenges to such
searches.  By contrast, although I agree with the Court
that the accusatory nature of the District's testing
program is diluted by making it a blanket one, any
testing program that searches for conditions plainly
reflecting serious wrongdoing can never be made wholly
nonaccusatory from the student's perspective, the
motives for the program notwithstanding; and for the
same reason, the substantial consequences that can flow
from a positive test, such as suspension from sports, are
invariably-and quite reasonably-understood as punish-
ment.  The best proof that the District's testing program
is to some extent accusatory can be found in James
Acton's own explanation on the witness stand as to why
he did not want to submit to drug testing: -Because I
feel that they have no reason to think I was taking
drugs.-  Tr. 13 (Apr. 29, 1992).  It is hard to think of a
manner of explanation that resonates more intensely in
our Fourth Amendment tradition than this.

                           II
  I do not believe that suspicionless drug testing is
justified on these facts.  But even if I agreed that some
such testing were reasonable here, I see two other
Fourth Amendment flaws in the District's program.
First, and most serious, there is virtually no evidence in
the record of a drug problem at the Washington Grade
School, which includes the 7th and 8th grades, and
which Acton attended when this litigation began.  This
is not surprising, given that, of the four witnesses who
testified to drug-related incidents, three were teachers
and/or coaches at the high school, see Tr. 65; id., at 86;
id., at 99, and the fourth, though the principal of the
grade school at the time of the litigation, had been
employed as principal of the high school during the
years leading up to (and beyond) the implementation of
the drug testing policy.  See id., at 17.  The only
evidence of a grade school drug problem that my review
of the record uncovered is a -guarantee- by the late-
arriving grade school principal that -our problems we've
had in '88 and '89 didn't start at the high school level.
They started in the elementary school.-  Id., at 43.  But
I would hope that a single assertion of this sort would
not serve as an adequate basis on which to uphold mass,
suspicionless drug testing of two entire grades of
student-athletes-in Vernonia and, by the Court's
reasoning, in other school districts as well.  Perhaps
there is a drug problem at the grade school, but one
would not know it from this record.  At the least, then,
I would insist that the parties and the District Court
address this issue on remand.
  Second, even as to the high school, I find unreasonable
the school's choice of student athletes as the class to
subject to suspicionless testing-a choice that appears to
have been driven more by a belief in what would pass
constitutional muster, see id., at 45-47 (indicating that
the original program was targeted at students involved
in any extracurricular activity), than by a belief in what
was required to meet the District's principal disciplinary
concern.  Reading the full record in this case, as well as
the District Court's authoritative summary of it, 796
F. Supp. 1354, 1356-1357 (Ore. 1992), it seems quite
obvious that the true driving force behind the District's
adoption of its drug testing program was the need to
combat the rise in drug-related disorder and disruption
in its classrooms and around campus.  I mean no
criticism of the strength of that interest.  On the
contrary, where the record demonstrates the existence of
such a problem, that interest seems self-evidently
compelling.  -Without first establishing discipline and
maintaining order, teachers cannot begin to educate
their students.-  T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 350 (Powell, J.,
concurring).  And the record in this case surely demon-
strates there was a drug-related discipline problem in
Vernonia of -`epidemic proportions.'-  796 F. Supp., at
1357.  The evidence of a drug-related sports injury
problem at Vernonia, by contrast, was considerably
weaker.
  On this record, then, it seems to me that the far more
reasonable choice would have been to focus on the class
of students found to have violated published school rules
against severe disruption in class and around campus,
see Record, Exh. 2, at 9, 11-disruption that had a
strong nexus to drug use, as the District established at
trial.  Such a choice would share two of the virtues of
a suspicion-based regime: testing dramatically fewer
students, tens as against hundreds, and giving students
control, through their behavior, over the likelihood that
they would be tested.  Moreover, there would be a
reduced concern for the accusatory nature of the search,
because the Court's feared -badge of shame,- ante, at 17,
would already exist, due to the antecedent accusation
and finding of severe disruption.  In a lesser known
aspect of Skinner, we upheld an analogous testing
scheme with little hesitation.  See Skinner, 489 U. S., at
611 (describing -`Authorization to Test for Cause'-
scheme, according to which train operators would be
tested -in the event of certain specific rule violations,
including noncompliance with a signal and excessive
speeding-).

                           III
  It cannot be too often stated that the greatest threats
to our constitutional freedoms come in times of crisis.
But we must also stay mindful that not all government
responses to such times are hysterical overreactions;
some crises are quite real, and when they are, they
serve precisely as the compelling state interest that we
have said may justify a measured intrusion on constitu-
tional rights.  The only way for judges to mediate these
conflicting impulses is to do what they should do any-
way: stay close to the record in each case that appears
before them, and make their judgments based on that
alone.  Having reviewed the record here, I cannot avoid
the conclusion that the District's suspicionless policy
of testing all student-athletes sweeps too broadly, and
too imprecisely, to be reasonable under the Fourth
Amendment.