New Jersey v. T.L.O. 1985
| Author | Daniel Brannen, Richard Hanes, Elizabeth Shaw |
| Pages | 426-431 |
Page 426
Petitioner: State of New Jersey
Respondent: T.L.O.
Petitioner's Claim: That the assistant vice principal did not violate the Fourth Amendment when he searched T.L.O.'s purse after she had been caught smoking in the restroom.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner: Allan J. Nodes, Deputy Attorney General of New Jersey
Chief Lawyer for Respondent: Lois De Julio
Justices for the Court: Harry A. Blackmun, Warren E. Burger, Sandra Day O'Connor, Lewis F. Powell, Jr., William H. Rehnquist, Byron R. White
Justices Dissenting: William J. Brennan, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, John Paul Stevens
Date of Decision: January 15, 1985
Decision: The Supreme Court approved the principal's search and affirmed the decision that T.L.O. was a juvenile delinquent.
Significance: With T.L.O., the Supreme Court said public school officials can search students' private belongings without a warrant or probable cause. To conduct a search, public schools need only a reasonable suspicion that a student has violated the law or a school rule.
Page 427
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects privacy. It requires the police to get a warrant to search a person, house, or other private place for evidence of a crime. To get a warrant, police must have probable cause, which means good reason to believe the place to be searched has evidence of a crime. In New Jersey v. T.L.O., the Supreme Court had to decide whether public schools needed a warrant and probable cause to search a student's purse.
On March 7, 1980, a teacher at Piscataway High School in Middlesex County, New Jersey, found two girls smoking in a restroom. One of the girls was T.L.O. (The courts used the girl's initials to protect her privacy.) Smoking in the restroom was against school rules, so the teacher took the girls to the principal's office.
There the girls spoke to Assistant Vice Principal Theodore Choplick. T.L.O.'s friend admitted that she had been smoking in the restroom, but T.L.O. denied it. In fact, T.L.O. said she never smoked. Choplick did not believe this, so he took T.L.O. into his private office. There he demanded to see T.L.O.'s purse. When she gave it to him, Choplick opened it and found a pack a cigarettes inside. Choplick pulled the cigarettes out and accused T.L.O. of lying.
When Choplick looked back into the purse, he saw a package of cigarette rolling papers. In Choplick's experience, students with rolling papers often used marijuana, an illegal drug. Without getting permission, Choplick searched the rest of T.L.O.'s purse. Inside he found a small amount of...
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