Attorneys Appeal Decision Upholding School Sex and Drugs Survey
by Jim Brown
October 1, 2004
(AgapePress) - New Jersey parents are appealing a federal court decision that upholds a school-administered sex, drugs, and alcohol survey they believe violates their children's rights to free speech and privacy.The parents sued over a survey called "Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behavior," which was carried out among junior high and high school students in the Ridgewood School District. The parents contended that the highly personal and intrusive questionnaire was administered by the Ridgewood Board of Education to children and adolescents at Ridgewood High School and Benjamin Franklin Middle School without prior parental notification or consent.
However, in June a district judge ignored evidence that participation in the study was not strictly voluntary and anonymous as required by law. The judge ruled that the survey did not violate the children's and the parents' rights to free speech and privacy because it was administered on a voluntary basis.
Attorney Mike Daily of The Rutherford Institute is now appealing the ruling to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He says the "Profiles of Student Life" survey asks very personal questions of young people, and the judge wrongly determined that it was administered in a voluntary fashion.
"We think that if the case was allowed to go to a jury, a jury could conclude that the survey was compelled," Daily says, "which is what the U.S. Department of Education found in its investigation -- that the school board had in fact required the survey to be given."
Rutherford attorneys are arguing on the parents' behalf that the survey used in the Ridgewood School District, in addition to being administered involuntarily and without parental consent, also contained inappropriate questions. Among these were such queries as "Have you ever tried to kill yourself?" "Do you use heroin, morphine, or opium?" and "When you have sex, how often do you use a birth-control method?"
Daily finds fault with the way the questions were put to students on the survey. "It asks for information in a format that suggests that certain conduct, such as hard-core drug use and sex, is the rule rather than the exception," he says.
The questionnaire was developed by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute, which seeks to effect social change through its "Healthy Families, Healthy Youth" program. Search Institute is an independent, nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities by generating and advancing "new knowledge" and forging partnerships between community, state, and national leaders.
The families involved in the lawsuit claim the content of the survey and the way in which it was administered violated the constitutional rights of the students and their parents under the First, Fourth, Fight, and Fourteenth Amendments and also deprived them of their rights under the Family Education Records Privacy Act (FERPA). Rutherford Institute attorneys argue that Ridgewood School District officials should have realized they would be violating the families' rights by promising the survey would be voluntary then compelling students to participate.
