New Jersey v. T. L. O.

New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985) was a case appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States in 1984, involving the search of a high school student for contraband after she was caught smoking. She was charged as a juvenile for the drugs and paraphernalia found in the search. She fought the search, claiming it violated her Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 ruling, held that the search was reasonable under the Fourth Amendment.

Background
Two female New Jersey freshmen at Piscataway High School were caught smoking cigarettes in the bathroom. Smoking at the school in itself was not prohibited; however, students were only supposed to smoke in a designated smoking area. The teacher took the two girls to the principal's office, in which they met with the assistant vice principal, Theodore Choplick. Choplick questioned them about violating a school rule by smoking in the bathroom. The first girl admitted to smoking, but the other girl - known as T.L.O - denied smoking in the bathroom and stated she had never smoked in her life.

Choplick then asked T. L. O. into his private office to demanded she hand over her purse. Upon opening the purse he observed a pack of cigarettes; while removing the cigarettes he noticed a package of rolling papers. Based on his experience, the possession of rolling papers of high school students was closely tied to the use of marijuana. Choplick then began a more thorough search for the evidence of drugs. His search revealed a small amount of marijuana, a pipe, empty plastic bags, a large quantity of money in $1 bills, an index card that appeared to list students who owed T. L. O. money, and two letters that implicated T. L. O. in dealing marijuana.

Choplick then notified T. L. O.'s mother and the police, to whom he turned over the evidence of drug dealing. The police requested the mother to take her daughter to police headquarters. T. L. O. and her mother went to the police station where T. L. O. confessed to selling marijuana at the high school. Using the confession and the evidence obtained by Choplick's search, the State brought delinquency charges against T. L. O. in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Middlesex County.

Lower courts
T.L.O. states that the assistant principal's search violated the Fourth Amendment. She moved to suppress the evidence found in her purse as well as her confession, arguing, the evidence was "fruit of the poisonous tree." The Juvenile Court denied the motion to suppress. Although the court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did apply to searches carried out by school officials, it held:
 * "a school official may properly conduct a search of a student's person if the official has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is in the process of being committed, or reasonable cause to believe that the search is necessary to maintain school discipline or enforce school policies." Id., at 341, 428 A. 2d, at 1333 (emphasis in original).

Opinion of the Court
The Supreme Court of the United States, in a 6-3 decision issued by Justice White, ruled that the search and seizure by school officials without a warrant was constitutional as long as the search is deemed reasonable given the circumstances. The Court reaffirmed that there is a balancing between the individual's--even a child's--legitimate expectation of privacy and the school's interest in maintaining order and discipline. Accordingly, school officials do not need a warrant to search the belongings of students, but they do require a "reasonable suspicion" test (a lesser standard than the Probable Cause standard), here meaning the reasonableness of the search under all the circumstances. Such reasonableness was based on two criteria: 1, whether the action was justified at its inception; 2, whether the search as actually conducted was unreasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.

Here, the Court disagreed with the lower courts' findings that it was not. The Court considered that TLO had been accused of smoking, which had been corroborated by the other girl, and had denied the accusation. Therefore, her possession of any cigarettes was relevant to whether or not she was being truthful, and since she had been caught in the bathroom and taken directly to the office, it was reasonable to assume she had the cigarettes in her purse. Thus, the vice-principal had reasonable cause to suspect a school rule had been broken, and more than just a "hunch" to search the purse. When the vice-principal was searching for the cigarettes, the drug-related evidence was in plain view. Plain view is an exception to the warrant requirement of the 4th Amendment. Thus, the search for cigarettes lead to some of the drug related material, which justified a further search (including the zippered compartments inside the bag) that turned up the rest of it.

This overturned the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling.

In a separate, concurring opinion, Justice Powell (joined by Justice O'Connor) stated that while he agreed with the Court's opinion, he felt that students in primary and secondary educational settings should not be afforded the same level of protection for search and seizures and adults and juveniles in non-school settings.

Distinguished from Collaborative Efforts
In Footnote 4 of the Majority opinion, the Court noted that its holding applied only to school authorities acting on their own, not for any searches that were conducted in concert or at the behest of law enforcement agencies. As that issue had not been raised by this case, the Court specifically noted that it was expressing no opinion on the subject.

Dissent
Justice Brennan, joined by Justice Marshall, agreed with the majority's reasoning regarding a balancing approach to school searches. He disagreed, however, with the new standard set down by the Court, which he felt was a departure from the traditional "probable cause" approach:

'Today's decision sanctions school officials to conduct fullscale searches on a "reasonableness" standard whose only definite content is that it is not the same test as the "probable cause" standard found in the text of the Fourth Amendment. In adopting this unclear, unprecedented, and unnecessary departure from generally applicable Fourth Amendment standards, the Court carves out a broad exception to standards that this Court has developed over years of considering Fourth Amendment problems. Its decision is supported neither by precedent nor even by a fair application of the "balancing test" it proclaims in this very opinion.'

Resources

 * Full text opinion from Findlaw.com
 * Oyez.org summary
 * LandmarkCases.com