Doe ex rel. Doe v. Little Rock School Dist., 03-3268.

• Decision Date: 18 August 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-3268.,03-3268.
• Parties: Jane DOE, by her parents and next friends Mr. and Mrs. John DOE, individually and on behalf of a plaintiff class consisting of all secondary public school students who have started the seventh grade in the Little Rock School District as of the 1999-2000 school year, Appellant, v. LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

380 F.3d 349

Jane DOE, by her parents and next friends Mr. and Mrs. John DOE, individually and on behalf of a plaintiff class consisting of all secondary public school students who have started the seventh grade in the Little Rock School District as of the 1999-2000 school year, Appellant, v. LITTLE ROCK SCHOOL DISTRICT, Appellee.

No. 03-3268.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

Submitted: May 13, 2004.

Filed: August 18, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Stephen M. Reasoner, J.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Patrick J. Benca, argued, Little Rock, AR (John Wesley Hall, Jr., on the brief), for appellant.

Christopher Heller, Little Rock, AR, argued, for appellee.

Before MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, BEAM, and MELLOY, Circuit Judges.

MORRIS SHEPPARD ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.

This case requires us to decide whether the practice of the Little Rock School District (LRSD) that subjects secondary public school students to random, suspicionless searches of their persons and belongings by school officials is unconstitutional. We conclude that such searches violate the students' fourth amendment rights because they unreasonably invade their legitimate expectations of privacy.

Jane Doe is a secondary school student in the LRSD. One day during the school year, all of the students in Ms. Doe's classroom were ordered to leave the room after removing everything from their pockets and placing all of their belongings, including their backpacks and purses, on the desks in front of them. While the students were in the hall outside their classroom, school personnel searched the items that the students had left behind, including Ms. Doe's purse, and they discovered marijuana in a container in her purse. The parties have stipulated that LRSD has a practice of regularly conducting searches of randomly selected classrooms in this manner.

In her amended complaint, Ms. Doe, individually and on behalf of a class of "all secondary public school students who have started seventh grade in the [LRSD] as of the 1999-2000 school year," claimed that this method of conducting searches is unconstitutional, and sought declaratory and injunctive relief pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983. After certifying the case as a class action, the district court entered judgment for the LRSD and dismissed the complaint with prejudice. We reverse.

I.

The fourth amendment provides that "[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated." U.S. Const. amend. IV. The fourteenth amendment extends this constitutional guarantee to searches by state officers, including public school officials. See New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 334-37, 105 S.Ct. 733, 83 L.Ed.2d 720 (1985). "In carrying out searches ... school officials act as representatives of the State, not merely as surrogates for the parents, and they cannot claim the parents' immunity from the strictures of the Fourth Amendment." Id. at 336-37, 105 S.Ct. 733. "Reasonableness" is "the touchstone of the constitutionality of a governmental search," Board of Educ. of Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 92 of Pottawatomie County v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 828, 122 S.Ct. 2559, 153 L.Ed.2d 735 (2002), and the relevant constitutional question in school search cases is "whether the search was reasonable in all the circumstances," Thompson v. Carthage Sch. Dist., 87 F.3d 979, 982 (8th Cir.1996).

In determining whether a particular type of school search is constitutionally reasonable, we engage in a fact-specific "balancing" inquiry, under which the magnitude of the government's need to conduct the search at issue is weighed against the nature of the invasion that the search entails. "On one side of the balance are arrayed the individual's legitimate expectations of privacy and personal security; on the other, the government's need for effective methods to deal with breaches of public order." T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 337, 105 S.Ct. 733.

The Supreme Court has developed a framework designed to make the required balancing of privacy and security interests somewhat less amorphous than it might otherwise be. A reviewing court is to consider first the "scope of the legitimate expectation of privacy at issue," then the "character of the intrusion that is complained of," and finally the "nature and immediacy of the governmental concern at issue" and the efficacy of the means employed for dealing with it. See Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 654-66, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 132 L.Ed.2d 564 (1995). The district court addressed each of these considerations in turn, and decided that they all supported the conclusion that the search practice involved in this case was reasonable. In particular, the district court stated in its order that LRSD students have only a "limited privacy interest," and that the search practice is "minimally intrusive, is preceded by adequate notice, is motivated by a significant policy concern, and is directed towards an immediate, legitimate need." Given these determinations, the district court held that "the search policy" was constitutional because it "reasonably serves the school district's important interest in detecting and preventing drug use among its students." In reaching this conclusion, the district court relied heavily on two recent cases in which the Supreme Court upheld school district policies that allowed only those students who agree to be subject to random drug testing to participate in school athletics or other competitive extracurricular activities. See Vernonia, 515 U.S. at 648, 664-65, 115 S.Ct. 2386; Earls, 536 U.S. at 825, 122 S.Ct. 2559.

After reviewing the reasonableness issue de novo, we conclude that the district court underestimated the extent to which the LRSD's search practice intrudes upon its students' legitimate privacy interests, and overestimated the substantiality of the LRSD's factual showing that such an intrusion was necessary to address a significant difficulty in the schools. Students presumptively have a legitimate, though limited, expectation of privacy in the personal belongings that they bring into public schools. Because subjecting students to full-scale, suspicionless searches eliminates virtually all of their privacy in their belongings, and there is no evidence in the record of special circumstances that would justify so considerable an intrusion, we hold that the search practice is unconstitutional.

II.

We ask first whether secondary public school students in the LRSD retain any legitimate expectations of privacy. The district court, quoting Earls, 536 U.S. at 830, 122 S.Ct. 2559, noted that a "`student's privacy interest is limited in a public school environment where the State is responsible for maintaining discipline, health, and safety.'" Students in public schools do indeed have lesser expectations of privacy than people generally have in public situations, due in large part to the government's responsibilities "as guardian and tutor of children entrusted to its care." Vernonia, 515 U.S. at 665, 115 S.Ct. 2386 (footnote omitted). Public school students' privacy interests, however, are not nonexistent. We think it is clear that schoolchildren are entitled to expect some degree of privacy in the personal items that they bring to school.

As a general matter, "the Fourth Amendment provides protection to the owner of every container that conceals its contents from plain view," United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 822-23, 102 S.Ct. 2157, 72 L.Ed.2d 572 (1982), and public school students thus retain a protection against "unreasonable" searches of their backpacks and purses by school officials. Schoolchildren have a legitimate need to bring items of personal property into their schools, which are their "homes away from home" where they are required by compulsory attendance laws to spend a substantial portion of their waking hours. They "at a minimum must bring to school not only the supplies needed for their studies, but also keys, money, and the necessaries of personal hygiene and grooming," and they may also carry with them "such nondisruptive yet highly personal items as photographs, letters, and diaries." T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 339, 105 S.Ct. 733. Unlike prisoners, who "retain no legitimate expectations of privacy in their cells" after having been convicted and incarcerated, see id. at 338, 105 S.Ct. 733, public school students have traditionally been treated as presumptively responsible persons entitled to some modicum of privacy in their personal belongings, at least to the extent that recognition of such privacy interests does not unduly burden the maintenance of security and order in schools.

The Supreme Court has observed that there is a tension between the types of privacy "interests protected by the Fourth Amendment and the interest of the States in providing a safe environment conducive to education in the public schools," id. at 332 n. 2, 105 S.Ct. 733, and has concluded that the fourth amendment allows school officials some flexibility in resolving this tension. But it has characterized as "severely flawed" a state's argument that "because of the pervasive supervision to which children in the schools are necessarily subject, a child has virtually no legitimate expectation of privacy in articles of personal property `unnecessarily' carried into a school." Id. at 338, 105 S.Ct. 733. While the Court has acknowledged that students' privacy rights are limited due to the "difficulty of maintaining discipline in the public schools," and that "drug use and violent crime in the schools have become major social problems," it has stated that "the situation is not so dire that students in the schools may claim no legitimate expectations of privacy." Id. at 338-39, 105 S.Ct. 733.

It is true that the legitimate expectation of privacy retained by members of certain sub-populations of a public school's student...