High Court Search Ruling Praised by School Officials

School officials applauded the Supreme Court Tuesday for sanctioning the kind of “reasonable” searches of students that they said already are being carried out by the vast majority of teachers and administrators.

The court’s decision approving a less stringent rule for school searches than that required for searches by policemen “sustains what has been our practice for years,” said Ron Apperson, legal adviser for the Los Angeles city schools. “ . . . We believe it will help us maintain safe and orderly campuses.”

But, until the high court’s ruling, many school officials had been holding back on searches because they feared that they would face civil rights suits filed by aggrieved students, according to Gwendolyn H. Gregory, an attorney with the National School Boards Assn.

However, representatives of civil liberties groups strongly criticized the decision. “I think it will probably mean that students are going to be subjected to more intrusive searches in deprivation of their constitutional rights,” said Mary L. Heen, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.

Much of school officials’ fears had been caused, according to Gregory, by a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling that a school administrator, who found drug paraphernalia when he searched a student’s purse, had lacked “reasonable grounds” for the search.

But, “now we can feel a little freer” to search students for drugs, weapons and other contraband, Ivan B. Gluckman, chief lawyer for the National Assn. of Secondary School Principals, said after the New Jersey decision was overturned Tuesday.

Robert Chanin, an attorney for the National Education Assn., said he thinks that the high court’s decision struck a good balance between students’ rights and a school’s need to maintain discipline. The court said that students still are protected by the Fourth Amendment, he pointed out, even though searches could be conducted on grounds of “reasonable suspicion” instead of the more demanding “probable cause.”

“The message that should go out to teachers and administrators,” Chanin said, “is that you have an absolute right to investigate suspicious circumstances--but you can’t do it in a capricious, arbitrary manner.”

Detering ‘Onerous Practices’ Chanin said also that he thought the ruling would deter school officials from “onerous practices” such as “pat-searching young girls.”

But Janet Price, an attorney with Advocates for Children of New York City, a children’s rights group, was not so reassured.

“This decision may have a subtle, insidious effect in that it will be too broadly interpreted. I’m concerned there won’t be good enough reasons for searches,” she said.

” . . . I think searches of kids’ persons can cause a lot more problems than they solve. When school officials are too quick to start searching kids, it creates an armed-camp atmosphere.”

And the ACLU’s Heen said: “Students ought to be protected by the same constitutional rights as outsiders.”

Gregory conceded that a rule based on “reasonable suspicion” could be interpreted broadly and thus be subject to abuse.

“But, in its opinion, the court talked about common sense--and that’s what it is really all about,” she said. “You don’t have to be a lawyer to know it is not reasonable under any standard to strip-search a whole class after a kid complains that he is missing $4.”

In its decision Tuesday, the court ruled only on the right of school officials to search a student and his belongings; it did not pass direct judgment on what grounds officials must have to search lockers and desks.

But Apperson said that Los Angeles school officials maintain the same “reasonable suspicion” policy for all searches.

“We emphasize to our administrators that there should be no confusion in a student’s mind that a student’s locker belongs to the school and we may search it to find contraband,” he said.