Rules Eased on Searches of Students : Citing Disorder, Court Curbs Pupils’ Right to Privacy

The Supreme Court, citing the growing problem of disorder in the public schools, gave teachers and administrators wide power Tuesday to search students they suspect of committing crimes or of violating school rules.

The justices held unanimously that students are entitled to some protection under the Fourth Amendment. But, by a vote of 6 to 3, they said that, unlike police, school authorities do not need a warrant or “probable cause” to believe a crime has occurred before conducting searches of students and their belongings.

Ordinarily, a search will be justified when there are “reasonable grounds” for suspecting that it will uncover evidence that a student broke the law or school rules, the majority on the court said. Searches must be “reasonably related” to their objectives and “not excessively intrusive” in view of the age and sex of the student and nature of the infraction, it said.

Striking a Balance But the court, in trying to strike a balance between competing interests, said that the right to privacy must be limited by the need to ensure school discipline. Justice Byron R. White, writing the majority opinion, observed:

“Maintaining order in the classroom has never been easy, but, in recent years, school disorder has often taken particularly ugly forms: Drug use and violent crime in the schools have become major social problems.”

But the court’s dissenters warned that the decision represented a “dangerous weakening” of the right to privacy and could lead to searches, not just for drugs or weapons, but also for “trivial” infractions of rules.

‘A Curious Moral’ “For the court, a search for curlers and sunglasses . . . to enforce the school dress code is apparently just as important as a search for evidence of heroin addiction or violent gang activity,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent. “ . . . The court’s decision today is a curious moral for the nation’s youth.”

The case before the court was one of the most widely awaited on the justices’ docket for the current term.

In “friend of the court” briefs, education groups urged the justices to give teachers and administrators sufficient leeway to curb violence and drugs. Civil liberties organizations warned against lax standards that would open the way for abusive searches. The Reagan Administration, citing the “growing lack of discipline” in the schools, asked that teachers, acting much like parents, be given more discretion to search than are police officers.

The case involved a 14-year-old female student, identified only as T.L.O., whom a teacher saw holding a lighted cigarette in a restroom at Piscataway, N.J., High School in 1980.

The teacher reported the incident to a school vice principal. When he questioned the girl, she denied that she ever smoked. But the administrator took her into his office, opened her purse and found not only cigarettes but also rolling papers of the kind used for marijuana. Looking further, he found marijuana, a pipe, several plastic bags, $40 in $1-dollar bills and a list of names indicating that the girl had been selling the drug to her fellow students.

Adjudged Delinquent The vice principal then notified the girl’s mother and police; and, in questioning at police headquarters, the girl admitted selling marijuana at school. She was tried, found guilty, adjudged a delinquent and placed on probation for one year.

Later, the Supreme Court of New Jersey upheld contentions by T.L.O.’s lawyers that the evidence should be suppressed because the vice principal had lacked reasonable grounds to search the girl’s purse.

But, on Tuesday, the Supreme Court reversed the state court, finding that the administrator’s actions were reasonable under the circumstances (New Jersey vs. T.L.O., 83-712). White’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justices Lewis F. Powell Jr., William H. Rehnquist and Sandra Day O’Connor. Justice Harry A. Blackmun concurred separately.

The ruling was consistent with previous court decisions extending some constitutional protections to students but stopping short of wholesale application of the same rights adults enjoy. For example, the justices have held that, although students facing suspension are entitled to notice and a hearing, they do not have the right to a lawyer or to present witnesses at such proceedings.

The court agreed without dissent that the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure applied to searches conducted by public school officials. School authorities act as “representatives of the state,” not merely as surrogates for parents, and may not claim the same kind of immunity from the Constitution as parents, it said.

Issue of Discipline But the court then divided on the question of how much protection to grant students, with the majority choosing to limit such protection to ensure discipline.

The court said that it would permit searches based on the simpler but lesser standard of “reasonable suspicion,” rather than the higher but more complex standard of “probable cause” to believe a crime had been committed. The simpler standard, White wrote, would spare teachers and administrators the necessity of mastering the “niceties” of the law and permit them to act on “reason and common sense.”

The majority rejected the contention Stevens made in dissent that some school rules are too trivial to justify a search based only on reasonable suspicion.

“The maintenance of discipline in the schools requires not only that students be restrained from assaulting one another, abusing drugs and alcohol and in committing other crimes, but also that students conform themselves to the standards of conduct prescribed by school authorities,” White said.

State Court Reversed The justices reversed the New Jersey court, finding that the actions of the vice principal that led to delinquency proceedings against T.L.O. were reasonable and did not violate the Fourth Amendment. A report from a teacher that the girl had been smoking in the lavatory provided a reasonable and “common sense” basis for opening her purse to see if she had cigarettes, they said. The subsequent discovery of rolling papers in turn justified the further exploration of the purse that turned up the incriminating evidence, they concluded.

Despite the court’s clear-cut assertion of the right to search, it left open three important related questions for resolution in future cases. The justices did not decide how their ruling would apply to searches conducted by school officials with or at the behest of law enforcement authorities or to searches of desks, lockers or other school property used by students. Nor did they rule on whether the so-called “exclusionary rule” bars use in criminal proceedings of evidence obtained in unlawful searches by school authorities.

The ruling covered only public schools, where, unlike private schools, authorities are acting as officials or agents of the state and thus can be liable for violating constitutional rights.

Other Dissenters In another dissent, Justice William J. Brennan Jr., joined by Justice Thurgood Marshall, said that, although school authorities should not be required to obtain a court-approved warrant, they should be held to a tougher standard for searches than the majority was establishing.

“A purse typically contains items of highly personal nature,” Brennan wrote. “Especially for shy or sensitive adolescents, it could prove extremely embarrassing for a teacher or principal to rummage through its contents, which could include notes from friends, fragments of love poems, caricatures of school authorities and items of personal hygiene.”

The majority’s refusal to adopt the “probable cause” requirement for school searches “portends a dangerous weakening” of constitutional protections for privacy, he said.