By Peter Gauvin
Ending a seven-year court battle and overturning several lower court decisions, the California Supreme Court ruled Friday that Stanford University athletes must submit to NCAA drug tests. The decision rejected claims first brought in a suit in January 1987 by Stanford's women's diving team captain Simone LeVant and subsequently joined by two other former Stanford athletes. They maintained that random drug testing, which requires athletes to disrobe and urinate while officials watch, violated their constitutional right to privacy.
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Conrad L. Rushing agreed and issued a permanent injunction barring the testing of Stanford athletes, except those in men's basketball and football. The state court of appeals upheld the order and the NCAA appealed.
Stanford had been the only holdout against the NCAA drug testing, which began in November 1986 at the Division I cross-country championships in Arizona and began for all championship events in 1987, despite Rushing's ruling.
Chief Justice Malcolm Lucas wrote the majority opinion in the 6-1 ruling. "The NCAA was well within its legal rights in adopting a drug testing program designed to eliminate the actual or potential influence of drugs in competitive sports," it stated. "Drugs have no place in intercollegiate athletics, where human physical performance is at stake."
The court said drug testing is a "highly visible, pervasive and well-accepted part of athletic competition" and a "reasonably expected part of the life of an athlete."
Justice Stanley Mosk cast the only dissenting vote. "Today, the majority take away from Stanford student athletes--and all other Californians--the right of privacy guaranteed by the California Constitution," he wrote.
Stanford Athletic Director Ted Leland said the court's decision was not a total defeat for athletes, and that in fact substantial modification of testing procedures had been accomplished.
"We believe that through the long process everyone won something," Leland said in a prepared statement. "College athletes made gains in their right to privacy; and we and the NCAA received guidance from the Supreme Court on what the California constitution will and will not allow.
"We have tried to make clear all along that Stanford never opposed drug testing," he added. "We, in fact, favor fair and effective programs to protect the health and welfare of athletes and athletics. And we intend to comply fully with NCAA programs."
"In this case, the university stood by its students in their challenge to the way drug-testing was done in 1987, which everyone has agreed was flawed. And that challenge, along with new research and improved methods, has been a force for important changes that have made the NCAA program more acceptable."
Among those changes are that the NCAA has stopped asking women directly about their use of birth-control pills and has removed from the list of banned substances certain ingredients in over-the-counter asthma treatments and cold remedies, such as Sudafed and Cotylenol.
Since the case was brought under the California constitution, the California Supreme Court has the last word and the case cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, said San Francisco attorney Steve Mayer, who argued the case for Stanford at the state Supreme Court level. The initial suit on behalf of LeVant was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
It is unclear how the court's ruling might apply to the workplace. "Employment settings are diverse, complex and very different from intercollegiate athletic competition," Lucas wrote. But Mayer noted that for the first time the court had declared that individuals have a constitutional right to privacy against private individuals and businesses.
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