Washington ? Several Supreme Court justices embraced the idea of random drug tests for students involved in after-school activities ranging from band to chess club, a major step toward allowing drug testing for all students.

A lawyer for a rural Oklahoma school district argued Tuesday that random drug tests for some students was a reasonable response to a general problem of drug use among young people.

If the court agrees, it would allow far broader scrutiny of the majority of the nation’s 24 million high school students who participate in extracurricular activities.

“Do you think any school in the United States does not have a drug problem?” Justice Antonin Scalia asked rhetorically at one point.

“The danger is getting kids used to the drug culture,” he said. “They’re forming their habits for the rest of their lives.”

The court has already ruled that schools may test athletes for drugs. That 1995 ruling made an exception to the general rule that authorities must have some specific reason to suspect wrongdoing before targeting someone for search.

The court found that the school in the first 1995 case had a widespread drug problem, and student athletes were among the users. Students who routinely strip naked in a locker room have a lower expectation of privacy than other students, the court reasoned then. Students who used drugs while playing vigorous sports could also be a danger to themselves or others, the court said.

Justice Stephen Breyer suggested the Oklahoma school district took the logical next step in light of the earlier ruling. Breyer voted with the majority to approve athlete testing, and he noted on Tuesday, “It’s hard for me to see if I came out one way (then) I’d come out different here.”

The court’s ruling in the current case, expected by summer, should fill in a major question left from the 1995 ruling: whether the factors that made drug testing acceptable for athletes apply to other after-school activities, or even students at large.

Wider drug testing remains relatively rare among the nation’s 15,500 public school districts. Lower courts have reached differing conclusions about the practice.

Some members of the Tecumseh, Okla., school board wanted to test all students, but lawyers advised limiting tests to students involved in competitive after-school activities on the theory that they, like athletes, had opened themselves to greater scrutiny than had students at large.

The Bush administration is backing the school district, as is a long list of organizations including the Drug-Free Schools Coalition and the National School Boards Assn.

“I think this is a deterrent,” argued school district lawyer Linda Meoli. “If they want to audition or go out for one of these competitive activities, they know” drug testing is a requirement.

Having a test hanging over students’ heads “is a way to say no,” to peer pressure, Meoli said.

Universal testing was clearly on the minds of many justices, and they challenged all sides to say whether such a policy would be constitutional. Meoli said probably not, and the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer challenging the school said definitely not.

But in what may be the Bush administration’s first such statement, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement said universal testing would be constitutional.

Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David H. Souter were the most vocal in questioning the Tecumseh policy.

O’Connor noted that lower court testimony indicated students involved in seemingly wholesome after-school activities were less likely than their peers to get into trouble with drugs.

“It’s just so odd,” she said of the testing plan. “It’s so counterintuitive, isn’t it?”