Searches of Students in the Name of School Safety   Tags: constitutional_law, education_law  

In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision in the case of New Jersey v. T.L.O., declaring that the question that mainly governs school searches of students or their belongings is whether the search was reasonable and whether the school official had reasonable grounds to conduct the search. This annotation provides primary and secondary resources to regarding various types of searches, all involving students on school premises, performed in the name of school safety in the wake of that decision.

This purpose of this research guide is to present the legal issues surrounding school searches following the 1985 Supreme Court decision in New Jersey v. T.L.O. and compile the research materials related to this subject into a single resource. The goal is for the material to be accessible and understandable to attorneys, law students, or even lay-persons with little to no familiarity with the topic.

In a new age of school shootings and drugs and guns infiltrating the school systems, schools are trying to be pre-emptive in assuring the safety of the students. Searches are a part of that pre-emptive action. Yet, these searches have raised Fourth Amendment concerns. Until recently, courts approached school search cases in one of four ways: 1) whether a school official acted as a government agent; 2) whether school personnel acted in loco parentis; 3) whether the school had a proprietary interest in the area searched; or 4) whether the search was reasonable. Then, in 1985, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in New Jersey v. T.L.O. that resulted in a shift to the reasonableness inquiry. The new emphasis was on whether the search was reasonable and whether the school official had reasonable grounds to conduct the search.

The Supreme Court never said that children have no expectation of privacy at all in schools. And it is established that expectation of privacy is at its greatest when the search involves the actual student or the student’s personal belongings carried on the student. But the Court conceded that some flexibility is necessary for the school to maintain order in the classroom and on school premises without being unduly restricted. The Court totally did away with the warrant requirement of the 4^th Amendment as well as lessened the level of suspicion required to conduct a search.

The Court said the new “reasonable test” involved a two-part inquiry: 1) was the action justified at its inception, and 2) was the search reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place?

With this analysis scheme in mind, this annotation will examine the “reasonableness” aspect of searches, and look at the rulings involving the following kinds of searches: purses, bookbags, handbags, etc.; locker searches, cars on school premises, searches of the student’s person, strip searches, and drug testing of students.

Mitchell Freehauf, as of Fall 2007, is a 3rd-year, full-time student at the Georgia State University College of Law. This guide was developed for Advanced Legal Research, taught by Professor Nancy Johnson, and was last updated November 11, 2007. II.

This annotation is not comprehensive and in no way should be understood to constitute legal advice. This annotation is intended to be a guide only and potential litigants should seek legal advice from an attorney or the appropriate state agency before relying on information provided here.

The author last updated this material Fall of 2007. Legal materials are constantly updated and news laws frequently passed. Users of this guide should therefore Keycite or Shepardize case law and statutes to ensure they are still good law.

 In addition, secondary sources frequently update annotations and add new ones, so users should verify they are using the most current edition of the publication and check the pocket parts.

Also, users should not rely on the author’s interpretation of cases, nor the authors referenced in treatises and journals, but read each case before citing it.

The author hopes this guide will provide an informative starting point for the user’s own research. The law library and its reference librarians will be an excellent source to determine where to proceed from there.

Bibliographies on this Web site were prepared for educational purposes by law students as part of Nancy P. Johnson's Advanced Legal Research course. The Law Library does not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided. Thorough legal research requires a researcher to update materials from date of publication; please note the semester and year the bibliography was prepared.