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Excerpts from the Majority Opinion
The case was decided 6 to 3.
Justice White delivered the opinion of the Court.
In
determining whether the search at issue in this case
violated the Fourth Amendment, we are faced initially
with the question whether that Amendment's prohibition
on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches
conducted by public school officials. We hold that it
does.
.
. . We have held school officials subject to the commands
of the First Amendment . . . Today's public school officials
do not merely exercise authority voluntarily conferred
on them by individual parents; rather, they act in furtherance
of publicly mandated educational and disciplinary policies
. . . In carrying out searches and other disciplinary
functions pursuant to such policies, school officials
act as representatives of the State, not merely as surrogates
for the parents, and they cannot claim the parents'
immunity from the strictures of the Fourth Amendment.
.
. . Although this Court may take notice of the difficulty
of maintaining discipline in the public schools today,
the situation is not so dire that students in the schools
may claim no legitimate expectations of privacy . .
.
Nor
does the State's suggestion that children have no legitimate
need to bring personal property into the schools seem
well anchored in reality. Students at a minimum must
bring to school not only the supplies needed for their
studies, but also keys, money, and the necessaries of
personal hygiene and grooming . . . [S]choolchildren
may find it necessary to carry with them a variety of
legitimate, noncontraband items, and there is no reason
to conclude that they have necessarily waived all rights
to privacy in such items merely by bringing them onto
school grounds.
Against
the child's interest in privacy must be set the substantial
interest of teachers and administrators in maintaining
discipline in the classroom and on school grounds. 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 . . . [W]e have recognized
that maintaining security and order in the schools requires
a certain degree of flexibility in school disciplinary
procedures, and we have respected the value of preserving
the informality of the student-teacher relationship.
.
. . The warrant requirement, in particular, is unsuited
to the school environment: requiring a teacher to obtain
a warrant before searching a child suspected of an infraction
of school rules (or of the criminal law) would unduly
interfere with the maintenance of the swift and informal
disciplinary procedures needed in the schools . . .
[W]e hold today that school officials need not obtain
a warrant before searching a student who is under their
authority.
The
school setting also requires some modification of the
level of suspicion of illicit activity needed to justify
a search. Ordinarily, a search—even one that may
permissibly be carried out without a warrant—must
be based upon "probable cause" to believe
that a violation of the law has occurred . . . However,
"probable cause" is not an irreducible requirement
of a valid search. The fundamental command of the Fourth
Amendment is that searches and seizures be reasonable,
and although "both the concept of probable cause
and the requirement of a warrant bear on the reasonableness
of a search, . . . in certain limited circumstances
neither is required."
.
. . [T]he legality of a search of a student should depend
simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances,
of the search . . . Under ordinary circumstances, a
search of a student by a teacher or other school official
will be "justified at its inception" 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.
Such a search will be permissible in its scope when
the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives
of the search and not excessively intrusive in light
of the age and sex of the student and the nature of
the infraction.
.
. . Because the search resulting in the discovery of
the evidence of marijuana dealing by T.L.O. was reasonable,
the New Jersey Supreme Court's decision to exclude that
evidence from T.L.O.'s juvenile delinquency proceedings
on Fourth Amendment grounds was erroneous. Accordingly,
the judgment of the Supreme Court of New Jersey is
Reversed.
Questions to Consider:
- Why
does the Court say the Fourth Amendment applies to
students in schools?
- What
does the Court say is balanced against the privacy
rights of students?
- Why
does the Court say the requirement of a warrant is
"unsuited to the school environment"?
- Describe
the standard the Court uses to determine whether a
school search is legal or not.
- Do
you think the "reasonableness" standard
is adequate to protect the rights of students against
invasions of privacy or other abuses? Give your reasons.
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