A Need for Prudence

Public-school administrators this week won a broad grant of power from the U.S. Supreme Court to search students whom they suspect of committing crimes or violating school rules. Whether they retain that authority, or should retain it, will depend, we think, on the prudence with which they use it.

The court unanimously decided that the Fourth Amendment governs such searches, but the justices, dividing 6 to 3, said that school officials may search students as long as there are “reasonable grounds” for believing that a search will uncover evidence of a crime or violation of school rules.

The “reasonable grounds” standard is a far less demanding one than the “probable cause” rule required of the police, but Justice Byron R. White, who wrote the majority opinion, said that “it is evident that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject . . . . The school setting also requires some modification of the level of suspicion of illicit activity needed to justify a search.”

Thus the court struck a balance between two opposing arguments in the controversy. The justices rejected a claim from school organizations that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to the actions of school officials, and rejected the opposite contention that the amendment applies with the same force in a school setting that it does outside the school door.

This moderate approach by the justices will not serve its intended effect if school officials ignore the court majority’s warning against permitting searches to become “unnecessarily intrusive.” Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens apparently found that stricture too vague. The majority ruling, he said, will allow school officials to search students for evidence of the “most trivial school regulation.” The majority seems to believe, Stevens suggested, “that 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.”

Stevens said that a better standard than the one adopted by the court would limit searches to students who are suspected of violating the law or of conduct that seriously disrupts the educational process. Whether Stevens is correct that the Supreme Court opinion allows school authorities too much latitude is a question that only experience can answer. But nothing in the decision forbids school officials to act with common-sense restraint, and the ruling can do no harm and may do some good if they use their new authority in that spirit.