ELLSWORTH — While the U.S. Supreme Court ponders the legalities of drunken-driver roadblock programs in Michigan, Maine law enforcement officials believe the sobriety checkpoints are here to stay.

Wayne Moss, an assistant state attorney general, said last week’s Supreme Court action may allow the justices to definitively state that drunken-driver roadblocks do not violate the U.S. Constitution’s protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

“The Michigan case may also give the U.S. Supreme Court the opportunity to establish guidelines for roadblock standards that will comply with the Fourth Amendment (prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure),” Moss said.

Twenty-one states permit police roadblocks that are designed to identify drunken drivers. Four years ago, Michigan police launched their own one-hour roadblock program and identified only two drunken drivers among 126 motorists stopped. Michigan’s single roadblock experience was challenged on constitutional grounds by the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. The roadblock practice was subsequently struck down as the result of a lower state court ruling.

Frank Kelley, Michigan attorney general, appealed the verdict to the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments in the case last week. In published and televised reports, Kelley stated that Michigan would prove the roadblock program meets the court’s tests of purpose, effectiveness and constitutionality.

Mark Granzotto, general counsel of the Michigan ACLU, countered that roadblocks do not deter drunken drivers and that the intrusion upon individuals “just isn’t worth it.”

Kelley argued the that “20-second intrusion” at roadblocks is a minimal inconvenience when compared to metal detector searches at airports and U.S. Customs inspections at border crossings. Granzotto maintained that in those instances, people are alerted by signs that they must submit to the search and thereby give their consent.

“There is no such forewarning with police roadblocks,” he said.

The ACLU lawyer said roadblocks eliminate the traditional enforcement concept which holds that police officers must have a reason to stop and question people.

“Drugs and weapons are a problem,” Granzotto said. “Do we randomly search everyone on the street for those items? Where does it stop?”

In Maine, a Hancock County Sheriff’s Department case was the basis for the state Supreme Court’s first ruling in 1988 on the constitutionality of drunken-driver roadblocks. Deputies for Hancock County Sheriff William F. Clark stopped a Milbridge man on U.S. Route 1 in Hancock on July 19, 1987. After entering a conditional plea of guilty to a charge of operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol for his client, the driver’s attorney, Earle S. Tyler, argued in an appeal to the state Supreme Court that the motorist’s Fourth Amendment rights had been violated by the roadblock.

In the court’s 5-0 opinion, Chief Justice Vincent McKusick said the state had a strong interest in protecting the public from drunken drivers and that the police roadblocks justified “a minor intrusion” upon guarantees against unreasonable search and seizure.

Moss said Thursday that in the 10-year-old case of Prouse vs. Delaware, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled roadblocks as constitutional providing they were carried out pursuant to a policy eliminating individual police officer discretion.