Court Case Related to NJ vs. T.L.O.

The radical court case that took place in 1980 between New Jersey and Picastaway student T.L.O. has led to a tumult of similar cases involving student’s 4^th amendment rights and personal privacy. In recent news many of these cases have revolved around searching student’s property, such as cars and lockers. One such case that took place in 2009 when an Egg Harbor principal, Peter Brandt, searched the locker of eighteen year old student, Thomas Best. Brandt resorted to searching the property after Best allegedly was caught selling a green pill to a tenth grade student. Upon searching the student’s Chevy Cavalier he was said to have come across a bottle of pills and marijuana. Best, subsequently, faced charges including possession of Valium, marijuana and steroids.

As an ongoing struggle to protect students while respecting their privacy, this case was brought to the Supreme Court, where Best’s Lawyer, Stephen Funk, explained that the student’s property should have been searched by a police officer, not a school official, "There is a police presence at the Egg Harbor Township High School. There is a resource office who is there on a daily basis." The case, just as T.L.O.'s lies in the question, do school officials have the right to search a student because of reasonable cause, or must there be evidence enough for reasonable cause? As ruled in the 1980 case reasonable cause is enough reason to search a student’s person. “School administrators need reasonable suspicion -- a standard that gives them more leeway than police officers have -- when a student is believed to have committed a crime.” The reason given by the state Supreme Court in the case of T.L.O was that schools have a larger responsibility in protecting students from danger. However, further implications, such as property like lockers or cars, were never discussed in this case; thereby, leaving many blanks to be colored in on a later date.

In this case it was decided that school officials need to balance the necessity to protect the students while also providing them with an adequate level of privacy, “that means student car searches should require probable cause, a higher standard that requires more evidence than the current one, said Avidan Cover, a lawyer for the ACLU, which is participating in the case.” Regardless of this conclusion it was essentially decided that in the case of Best, probable cause was found by the discovery of the drug sale, not just reasonable cause, therefore there was reason enough to search the student’s property.

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/09/nj_supreme_court_hears_argumen_2.html