Saturday, March 23, 2024

Cellphone search illegal if based only on past drug abuse

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A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled on March 28 that school officials violated the constitutional rights of a student when they read text messages on his cellphone without having a good reason to suspect wrongdoing.

In the case known as G.C. v. Owensboro Public Schools, the school district claimed teachers had every right in March 2009 to search the cellphone of a student, known in court records by the initials G.C., because he had several documented instances of drug abuse and suicidal thoughts on his record. And when they saw him texting at his desk, they claim they reasonably suspected he was engaged in illegal activity.

The district also claimed in court that their search was limited to looking for evidence of illegal activity or any indication that G.C. might hurt himself. In the school district’s opinion, G.C.’s past gave them good reason to suspect a search would turn up evidence of something illegal.

Now, when it comes to searches of cellphones in a school setting, there are two separate principles that need to be defended on the school’s part. First, a search must be reasonable in theory. Based on the Supreme Court case of New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341–42 (1985), “A student search is justified in its inception when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will garner evidence that a student has violated or is violating the law or the rules of the school, or is in imminent danger of injury on school premises.”

In other words, reasonable suspicion must be present that illegal activity will be found if a search is conducted. That’s the “in theory” part.

Second, the actual search and methodology used must limit the search to the circumstances that justified it in the first place. However, the basis of G.C.’s Fourth-Amendment argument was that the search failed the first test—it was not reasonable at its inception, that is. And since the appellate court agreed with him, there was no need to consider the second test. The question was moot at that point.

G.C. claimed—and the Sixth Circuit agreed—that general knowledge of drug abuse in his past didn’t give school officials a reasonable suspicion that he was using his cellphone in an illegal manner. He was just sitting at his desk, texting someone, and he became upset when his teacher confiscated his phone. The actual events here gave no reasonable suspicion that any illegal activity beyond contravention of school rules for texting in class was occurring, the Sixth Circuit said:

The defendants have failed to demonstrate how anything in this sequence of events indicated to them that a search of the phone would reveal evidence of criminal activity, impending contravention of additional school rules, or potential harm to anyone in the school. On these facts, the defendants did not have a reasonable suspicion to justify the search at its inception.

To put this in plain language, a search was not required to determine that G.C. was breaking the rule that prohibits texting in class: his teacher could see that without searching the cellphone.

Therefore, school officials needed to suspect him of breaking the law or a school rule beyond the “no texting in class” rule before they would be allowed to conduct a search in general. And his past history of drug abuse doesn’t count when it comes to the Fourth Amendment.

Then, assuming that’s all in order, the evidence they’re looking for must reasonably be expected to be on the cellphone, or they can’t search the cellphone. The search has to be limited to looking for evidence of the illegal activity they had reason to suspect in the first place.

Paul Katulahttps://news.schoolsdo.org
Paul Katula is the executive editor of the Voxitatis Research Foundation, which publishes this blog. For more information, see the About page.

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