On The Front Lines
New Jersey Parents Sue Over Invasive Sex, Drugs, Alcohol Survey
Rutherford Institute Attorneys File Brief in Third Circuit Court of AppealsPHILADELPHIA--Attorneys for The Rutherford Institute have filed an appeal with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals challenging a highly intrusive survey administered to students at Ridgewood High School and Benjamin Franklin Middle School by Ridgewood Board of Education without parental notification or consent. Attorneys are appealing the New Jersey Federal District Court's June 2, 2004, ruling that parents and children in Ridgewood, N.J. schools could not prevail against Ridgewood under their constitutional rights to privacy and free speech because the survey was administered on a "voluntary" basis. In their appeal brief to the Third Circuit, Institute attorneys challenged the lower court's decision on numerous grounds. Specifically, that the judge ignored evidence that the survey was not administered in a strictly "voluntary" and anonymous fashion as required by law.
"Schools must not be allowed to use their authority to educate as a license to incriminate," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "We are hopeful that the appeals court will grant the students and families who endured this humiliating survey their rightful day in court."
The survey, titled "Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behavior," was developed by the Minneapolis-based Search Institute and asked 156 questions on a variety of issues, including use of alcohol and illegal drugs, any mental and demeaning behavior and students' family relationships. Among the questions posed to the approximately 2,000 seventh- through twelfth-grade students in the Ridgewood School District in the fall of 1999 were, "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?"
The parents involved in this lawsuit charge that the content of the survey and the way in which it was administered deprived the students and their families of their rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the Family Education Records Privacy Act. Institute attorneys charge that Ridgewood officials "should have known that by promising the [parents] that the survey would be voluntary and then compelling the students to take the survey, they would be violating their rights."
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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