Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 14, 1990                   TAG: 9006140559
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/1   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

COURT OKS SOBRIETY CHECKPOINTS

The 6-3 ruling upheld Michigan's sobriety checkpoint program and, by extension, similar programs in most states. Some lower courts had upheld the use of checkpoints, at which all motorists are pulled off the road and checked for signs of intoxication. Others, like those in Michigan, had barred police from using checkpoints.

"No one can seriously dispute the magnitude of the drunken driving problem or the states' interest in eradicating it," Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the court.

"Conversely, the weight bearing on the other scale - the measure of the intrusion on motorists stopped briefly at sobriety checkpoints - is slight," he added.

Drunken drivers killed 23,000 people nationwide last year. President Bush called drunken driving a problem "as crippling as crack" cocaine, and last December asked state and local governments to step up the fight against drunken drivers.

Joining Rehnquist were Justices Byron White, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy. Justice Harry Blackmun joined in the result but not in Rehnquist's opinion. Justices William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall and John Paul Stevens dissented.

"I do not dispute the immense social cost caused by drunken drivers, nor do I slight the government's efforts to prevent such tragic losses," Brennan wrote. But he added, "In the face of the `momentary evil' of drunken driving, the court today abdicates its role as the protector of" the fundamental right of individual privacy.