Teacher Discipline as a “Seizure” Readers of this commentary will remember from their basic school law course that the legal test for searches of students originates from the U.S. Supreme Court case of New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985). T.L.O. held that student searches implicate a constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment, but, due to the special circumstances of schools, school administrators, unlike police officers, are not required to have probable cause to initiate a search; they are only required to have reasonable suspicion. T.L.O.’s legal test teaches that the search: 1) must be reasonable at its inception and 2) must be reasonable in scope. Subsequent case law about student searches also instructs us that, for a search to be reasonable at its inception, the school administrator must have individualized suspicion, i.e., must know the identity of the person who is the subject of the search, unless the circumstances provide the school administrator with one of the small number of exceptions to the rule, where individualized suspicion is waived. A search without individualized suspicion will usually not be considered justified, unless it begins where contraband is seen in plain view, when school property being searched is jointly used by the school and the student, or while conducting an emergency search for a firearm.
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Summer Issue 2024