New Jersey v. T. L. O.
The Supreme Court ruled that public school officials do not need a warrant or probable cause to search a student, as long as the search is reasonable under the circumstances -- based on reasonable suspicion that the student broke a school rule or the law.
Applying that standard, the Court found that an assistant principal's search of a 14-year-old's purse for cigarettes, which led to the discovery of marijuana and evidence of drug dealing, was constitutional, reversing a New Jersey court that had thrown out the evidence.
“Rather, the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search.”
The Court's central holding replacing probable cause with a reasonableness standard for school searches.
How it got here: A juvenile court denied suppression and found T. L. O. delinquent; an appellate court agreed the search was lawful; the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed and ordered the evidence suppressed, prompting the State's appeal.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A New Jersey high school teacher caught 14-year-old T. L. O. and a classmate smoking in a school bathroom, against school rules. When T. L. O. denied even smoking, the assistant vice principal searched her purse, found cigarettes, then rolling papers, and ultimately marijuana, cash, and notes suggesting she was selling drugs. The state used this evidence to bring delinquency charges against her.
The question before the Court
Could a school official search a student's purse for evidence of rule-breaking without a warrant or the usual "probable cause" police need?
Why it matters
School administrators nationwide can now search students' bags, pockets, and belongings based on a reasonable suspicion standard far easier to meet than the probable cause police normally need. Students carry a diminished expectation of privacy at school, and evidence found in such searches can be used against them in delinquency or criminal proceedings.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision. The evidence found in T. L. O.'s purse can be used against her, and the case returns to New Jersey courts under this ruling. The decision itself does not address whether the exclusionary rule -- which blocks illegally obtained evidence from being used -- applies to school searches, since the Court found no constitutional violation to begin with, leaving that question for another day.
What this does not decide
The Court expressly declined to decide whether the exclusionary rule applies to unlawful school searches, whether students have privacy rights in lockers or desks, or what standard applies when police are involved in a school search. It also did not decide whether individualized suspicion is always required for a lawful school search.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Powell
Justice Powell agreed with the Court but would have emphasized more heavily that students have a lesser expectation of privacy than the general population, given the close, familiar relationship between teachers and students. He stressed that school authority is not adversarial like police work, and that the Court has long allowed schools more flexibility than ordinary law enforcement in disciplinary matters.
Concurrence — Justice Blackmun
Justice Blackmun agreed with the outcome but argued the Court skipped a necessary step: departing from the probable-cause requirement is only proper when there is a 'special need,' beyond ordinary law enforcement, that makes a warrant and probable cause impracticable. He believed the unique pressures of maintaining order in schools supplied exactly that special need here.
Dissent in part — Justice Brennan
“Full-scale searches unaccompanied by probable cause violate the Fourth Amendment.”Brennan's core objection that the majority abandoned the probable-cause requirement without justification.
Justice Brennan agreed that the Fourth Amendment applies to school searches but strongly disagreed with replacing the probable-cause standard with a vaguer 'reasonableness' test. He argued full-scale searches have always required probable cause outside narrow, minimally intrusive exceptions like brief stops, and that applying probable cause to Mr. Choplick's search of the purse would have made it unconstitutional.
Dissent in part — Justice Stevens
Justice Stevens argued the Court should not have reached the constitutional search question at all, since the State's petition raised only the exclusionary-rule issue. On the merits, he argued the reasonableness of a school search should depend on how serious the suspected rule violation is, and that searching a student's purse over a minor smoking violation was not justified, unlike searches aimed at uncovering drugs, weapons, or violence.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first held that the Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches applies to public school officials, because they act as agents of the state even though they also have disciplinary authority over students -- rejecting the argument that teachers act merely as substitute parents exempt from constitutional limits.
- The Court then had to decide what standard of reasonableness applies in schools, weighing students' privacy interests against schools' need to keep order, a method the Court had used before to relax the warrant and probable-cause requirements in special settings like building inspections.
- Because requiring a warrant would be impractical for a teacher confronting a student rule-violation on the spot, the Court held that school officials do not need a warrant before searching a student under their authority.
- The Court concluded probable cause, the standard normally required for a full search, is also unnecessary in schools, and adopted a two-part reasonable-suspicion test instead: was the search justified at its start, and was its scope reasonably related to the suspected problem and not excessive given the student's age and the nature of the rule broken.
- Applying that test, the Court found the assistant principal had reasonable grounds to look for cigarettes given the smoking accusation, and once he saw rolling papers -- associated with marijuana use -- he had reasonable grounds to search further, making the entire search valid at each step.