Cite as: 520 U. S. 305 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 348 (1985) (Powell, J., concurring)). We emphasized the importance of deterring drug use by schoolchildren and the risk of injury a drug-using student athlete cast on himself and those engaged with him on the playing field. See Vernonia, 515 U. S., at 662.
B
Respondents urge that the precedents just examined are not the sole guides for assessing the constitutional validity of the Georgia statute. The "special needs" analysis, they contend, must be viewed through a different lens because § 21-2-140 implicates Georgia's sovereign power, reserved to it under the Tenth Amendment, to establish qualifications for those who seek state office. Respondents rely on Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U. S. 452 (1991), which upheld against federal statutory and Equal Protection Clause challenges Missouri's mandatory retirement age of 70 for state judges. The Court found this age classification reasonable and not barred by the federal legislation. See id., at 473. States, Gregory reaffirmed, enjoy wide latitude to establish conditions of candidacy for state office, but in setting such conditions, they may not disregard basic constitutional protections. See id., at 463; McDaniel v. Paty, 435 U. S. 618 (1978) (invalidating state provision prohibiting members of clergy from serving as delegates to state constitutional convention); Communist Party of Ind. v. Whitcomb, 414 U. S. 441 (1974) (voiding loyalty oath as a condition of ballot access); Bond v. Floyd, 385 U. S. 116 (1966) (Georgia Legislature could not exclude elected representative on ground that his antiwar statements cast doubt on his ability to take an oath). We are aware of no precedent suggesting that a State's power to establish qualifications for state offices—any more than its sovereign power to prosecute crime—diminishes the constraints on state action imposed by the Fourth Amendment. We therefore reject respondents' invitation to apply in this case a framework extraordinarily deferential to state meas-
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