After Gov. Linda Lingle rebuffed a formal letter from ACLU Hawaii demanding the testing be scrapped, the group's executive director, Vanessa Chong, said the ACLU would seek a court order against the testing as an unconstitutional violation of privacy rights.

"The governor's willingness to sacrifice the fundamental rights of public employees is deplorable. It is incomprehensible that she advocates violating both the U.S. and state constitutions and wasting precious taxpayer dollars for this ineffective drug testing scheme," Chong said in a news release Thursday.

She said the policy would affect up to 13,500 teachers, librarians, administrative workers and other school employees.

The state developed the drug testing plan after police arrested a half dozen Department of Education employees, including at least four teachers, on drug-related offenses over six months last year.

The group, in an Oct. 4 demand letter to the governor, had given Lingle until Thursday to cancel the program. Her response came in an Oct. 22 note declaring nothing in the ACLU's letter convinces the administration the program should not go ahead.

The ACLU said it would be acting on behalf of 200 educators who had complained about the drug-testing policy.

A majority of teachers, however, approved the drug testing as part of a contract between the state and the Hawai'i State Teachers Association in May that also gave them two annual 4 percent salary hikes. More than 60 percent of union members voted "yes" on the contract.

The union says the governor had indicated she would refuse to sign a contract that did not include the drug testing. Some teachers said the plan treats them like prison parolees but they felt forced to vote for it to get the pay raise.

"The men and women who teach in the classrooms of Hawai'i's public schools are demoralized by the governor's decision to spend hundreds of dollars to drug test one teacher while they barely have enough money to provide students with textbooks and school supplies," said Carlie Ware, an ACLU Drug Law Reform Project attorney.

The ACLU also announced it is seeking more plaintiffs for the suit.

Last year, a Leilehua High School teacher was arrested for dealing crystal methamphetamine; two Mililani Middle School teachers were arrested for allegedly smoking marijuana before school, and a Windward O'ahu teacher was charged with conspiring to distribute more than two pounds of cocaine and 990 tablets of the illegal drug Ecstasy.

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