Court Grives Schools More Power to Search Students : Justices Lift ‘probable Cause’ Rule

The Supreme Court, calling drug use and violent crime in public schools “major social problems,” today gave school officials more legal power to search students.

By a 6-3 vote, the court said public schoolteachers and administrators do not need court warrants nor the same justifications police officers need before searching a student.

Searches of students are justified “when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school,” Justice Byron R. White wrote for the court.

One of the dissenters, Justice John Paul Stevens, said the decision allows searches for “even the most trivial school regulation.”

Ruling Ridiculed “For the court,” Stevens said, “a search for curlers and sunglasses in order to enforce the school dress code is apparently just as important as a search for evidence of heroin addiction or violent gang activity.”

The court unanimously ruled that school officials, like police officers, must adhere to the Constitution’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. In other words, students have some constitutionally protected privacy rights when in school.

But six members, led by White, said teachers do not have to meet the “probable cause” standard applied when judging whether a police search was reasonable.

“Rather, the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search,” he said.

The court cautioned school officials against “excessively intrusive” searches.

White, while noting that “maintaining order in the classroom has never been easy,” said that in recent years “school disorder has often taken particularly ugly forms: Drug use and violent crimes in the schools have become major social problems.”

White was joined by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justices Lewis F. Powell Jr., William H. Rehnquist, Sandra Day O’Connor and Harry A. Blackmun.

Joining Stevens in dissent were Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall.

The ruling reinstated a delinquency finding against a former Piscataway (N.J.) High School student who four years ago--as a 14-year-old--admitted selling marijuana to fellow students.

What a Parent Might Do James Koch, the principal of the Piscataway school, said the ruling was “one of the greatest decisions in education in the last decade.”

“We’re talking reasonable searches, the same thing a parent might do,” Koch said.

The case began when the girl, identified in court records only as T.L.O., was caught smoking in a high school restroom. She was taken by a teacher to a vice principal’s office because smoking in non-designated areas was against school rules.

Questioned by Assistant Vice Principal Theodore Choplick, the girl denied that she had been smoking and said she never smoked. Choplick then opened her purse and saw a pack of cigarettes.

Digging further into the purse, Choplick found rolling papers--the kind often used for marijuana cigarettes--and records indicating the 14-year-old was selling marijuana to fellow students. He called the police.

The girl eventually admitted that she had been selling marijuana cigarettes for $1 each. She was tried as a juvenile, found to be delinquent and sentenced to one- year probation, conditioned on her attending a drug therapy program.

The New Jersey Supreme Court overturned the delinquency finding after ruling that the girl’s constitutional rights against unreasonable searches had been violated by Choplick.