## Facts

- Two brothers, Daren S. and Kacy S., were involved in an after-school disturbance near school grounds.
- Daren refused a teacher’s instruction to leave and got into a fight.
- Kacy did not fight but obstructed staff efforts to break up the altercation while yelling profanities.
- Wardship petitions were filed under Welfare and Institutions Code § 602; both minors admitted the allegations.
- At disposition, the juvenile court declared each minor a ward, allowed each to remain in parental custody, imposed six months’ probation, and required drug and alcohol testing (urinalysis) under Welfare and Institutions Code § 729.3.
- The record contained no indication that either minor’s offense conduct or background involved drug or alcohol use.
- The minors challenged the urinalysis condition as an abuse of discretion and as violating privacy, the prohibition on unreasonable searches, and substantive due process, and as allowing discriminatory application across courts or counties.

## Issues

1. Whether the juvenile court abused its discretion by imposing a § 729.3 urinalysis condition on § 602 wards who remained in parental custody despite no evidence of drug or alcohol involvement.
2. Whether compulsory urinalysis as a juvenile probation condition, imposed without individualized suspicion of substance use, constitutes an unreasonable search under federal and state constitutional protections.
3. Whether the statute or its application violates substantive due process by being arbitrary or permitting discriminatory enforcement.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal affirmed the dispositional orders, including the urinalysis condition.
- The juvenile court did not abuse its discretion because § 729.3 authorizes urinalysis for § 602 wards who remain at home and does not require a drug-related offense or history.
- The testing condition was a reasonable search given the minors’ reduced expectation of privacy as probationers and the state’s interests in rehabilitation and preventing future criminality.
- The condition was not arbitrary or unconstitutional merely because different courts might exercise discretion differently.

## Legal Principles

- Welfare and Institutions Code § 729.3 permits a juvenile court to require a § 602 ward who remains in parental custody to submit to drug and alcohol urine testing as a probation condition.
- A juvenile probationer’s conditional liberty entails a diminished expectation of privacy; probation conditions may impose searches reasonably related to supervision, rehabilitation, and public safety.
- Urinalysis, though a search, may be constitutionally reasonable as a probation condition even without individualized suspicion of drug use when justified by legitimate supervisory and rehabilitative goals.
- Discretionary variation in probation conditions among courts does not, without more, establish unconstitutional discrimination or a substantive due process violation.

## Conclusion

The court upheld a juvenile probation urinalysis condition authorized by statute, holding it permissible even absent evidence of substance abuse because juvenile probationers have reduced privacy expectations and the testing serves legitimate rehabilitative and public-safety objectives.


In re Kacy S., 80 Cal. Rptr. 2d 432 (Cal. Ct. App. 1998)