New Jersey v. T.L.O.

• 469 U.S. 325 (1985)
• Vote: 6–3
• For the Court: White
• Dissenting: Stevens, Brennan, and Marshall

A teacher at a New Jersey high school discovered a student smoking cigarettes in a school bathroom, which was a violation of school rules. The teacher took the student to the principal's office. The assistant principal questioned the student, who denied she had been smoking in the bathroom. The school official then demanded to see her purse. After opening it, he found cigarettes, cigarette rolling papers that are commonly associated with the use of marijuana, a pipe, plastic bags, money, a list of students who owed her money, and two letters that contained evidence that she had been involved in marijuana dealings.

As a result of this search of the student's purse and the seizure of items in it, the state brought delinquency charges against the student in New Jersey Juvenile Court. The student (identified in the case only by her initials, T.L.O.) countered with a motion to suppress evidence found in her purse as a violation of her constitutional rights against unreasonable and unwarranted searches and seizures.

The Issue

Is the 4th Amendment prohibition of unreasonable and unwarranted searches and seizures applicable to officials in a public school with regard to its students?

Opinion of the Court

The Supreme Court decided that the 4th Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures is applicable to searches conducted by public school officials, but that in this case a warrantless search of the student's purse was reasonable and permissible.

Justice Byron White wrote the opinion of the Court. He said that school officials may search a student in school as long as “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.”

Dissent

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent:

The search of a young woman's purse by a school administrator is a serious invasion of her legitimate expectations of privacy…. Because [the student's] conduct was neither unlawful nor significantly disruptive of school order or the educational process, the invasion of privacy associated with the forcible opening of T.L.O.'s purse was entirely unjustified at its inception…. The rule the Court adopts today is so open-ended that it may make the Fourth Amendment virtually meaningless in the school context. Although I agree that school administrators must have broad latitude to maintain order and discipline in our classrooms, that authority is not unlimited.

Significance

This decision indicated that the Court did not view the rights of students in a public school as equivalent to the rights of adults in a nonschool setting. Police need to demonstrate “probable cause” that individuals they search have violated or are violating a law. School officials, by contrast, need to have only “reasonable suspicion” of unlawful conduct to justify a search of students in school. School authorities, in this view, may restrict the rights of students in behalf of the school's compelling educational purpose.

See also Searches and seizures; Student rights under the Constitution