In the Matter of T.A.S.
| Citation | 270 Ed. Law Rep. 339,713 S.E.2d 211 |
| Decision Date | 19 July 2011 |
| Docket Number | No. COA10–275.,COA10–275. |
| Parties | In the Matter of T.A.S. |
| Court | Court of Appeal of North Carolina (US) |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal by Juvenile from order entered 27 March 2009 by Judge Thomas V. Aldridge, Jr. in Brunswick County District Court. Heard in the Court of Appeals 15 September 2010.
Attorney General Roy Cooper, by Assistant Attorney General Lotta A. Crabtree, for the State.
Geeta Nadia Kapur, Durham, for Juvenile.
T.A.S.1 appeals the trial court's order denying her motion to suppress evidence obtained during a school-wide student search at the Brunswick County Academy (Academy) that extended from the students' personal effects and jackets to their pockets, shoes, and socks and finally beneath the girls' outer clothing. Following the trial court's ruling, T.A.S. admitted to the offenses while “preserving her right to appeal the denial of her motion to suppress.” Where the blanket search of the entire school lacked any individualized suspicion as to which students were responsible for the alleged infraction or any particularized reason to believe the contraband sought presented an imminent threat to school safety, the search of T.A.S.'s bra was constitutionally unreasonable and we reverse the trial court's order denying her suppression motion.
Charged with possession of a Schedule III substance and drug paraphernalia, T.A.S. filed a motion to suppress, which was heard on 20 February 2009. Sandra Robinson, the Academy's principal and the State's only witness, testified that the Academy is an alternative school in the Brunswick County School System. Many of its students are assigned there because of disciplinary infractions at traditional schools, including behavioral problems and substance abuse or weapons violations on campus. While T.A.S. was a student at the Academy in November 2008, the record does not indicate the basis for her attendance.
To enter the Academy, students must pass through a metal detector, at which time their book bags, purses, and coats are also searched. More thorough searches of their persons are frequently conducted, sometimes in response to information from other students but regularly without any “leads.” On 5 November 2008, one of these more extensive searches was ordered after Ms. Robinson was informed by other students that pills of a type that “would cause kids to be unsafe” were currently coming into the school but had no further clues as to their nature or which students were responsible. The only details learned by administrators were that some of these students were hiding the pills in places not normally searched when they came through the metal detectors, like shoe tongues, socks, bras, and underwear.
After passing through the metal detectors that morning, all students were required to wait in the lunchroom to be brought one-by-one to a classroom to be searched, where they emptied their book bags, had their jackets thoroughly searched, removed their shoes, and emptied their pockets. A staff member whose sex is not specified in the record conducted the searches and patted down the students' socks. The girls were required to perform a “bra lift,” where they “pull their shirts out,” “shake them,” and “go underneath themselves with their thumb in the middle of their bra [to] pull it out.” 2 Other administrators and a resource officer, whose sexes are likewise unspecified, were also in the room, and a male law enforcement officer was present throughout-apparently regardless of the sex of the student being searched-solely to observe. During T.A.S.'s search, a white powder identified as Percocet and drug paraphernalia were found.
The trial court found “[t]here was no specific information regarding a particular student” and that a general search was nevertheless conducted “without any reasonable suspicion as to a particular student.” Nevertheless, it concluded that the search was reasonable under the circumstances based on companion findings that many Academy students are there because “of school policy violations regarding drugs and weapons”; pills, often prescribed to someone else, are found at the Academy two to three times every nine weeks; there is a “no penalty disclosure” policy in place during these searches; “[g]eneralized searches for weapons have been upheld because of special circumstances that permitted requiring male students to take off shoes, socks and empty pockets because of reports of weapons at school”; and “[n]o private parts were exposed” during the instant search. The trial court thus denied T.A.S.'s motion. We conclude, however, that at the point the Academy required T.A.S. to pull out her bra in searching her person for evidence of pills of an unknown nature and quantity, “the content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion,” Safford Unified Sch. Dist. # 1 v. Redding, –––U.S. ––––, ––––, 129 S.Ct. 2633, 2636, 174 L.Ed.2d 354, 359 (2009), and the search was accordingly unreasonable.
Where T.A.S. does not challenge any of the trial court's findings of fact in its order denying her motion to suppress, we must decide whether the findings support its conclusions of law, which we review de novo. “Under this standard, the legal significance of the findings of fact made by the trial court is a question of law for this Court to decide.” In re J.D.B., 196 N.C.App. 234, 237, 674 S.E.2d 795, 798 (2009).
T.A.S. contends the intrusive search by school authorities violated her Fourth Amendment rights. We agree.
We begin by reviewing the United States Supreme Court's treatment of public school searches under the Fourth Amendment—from articulating a special standard twenty-five years ago to its recent decision applying the established framework to more intrusive searches.
The Fourth Amendment functions “to safeguard the privacy and security of individuals against arbitrary invasions by government officials.” Camara v. Mun. Court, 387 U.S. 523, 528, 87 S.Ct. 1727, 1730, 18 L.Ed.2d 930, 935 (1967). While its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures generally requires a warrant based on probable cause, see U.S. Const. amend. IV, exceptions to the warrant requirement have surfaced, but such warrantless searches usually still require probable cause, see New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 340, 105 S.Ct. 733, 740, 83 L.Ed.2d 720, 734 (1985) (). The Court, however, has carved out other exceptions that dispense with both the warrant and probable cause requirements. See Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 652–53, 115 S.Ct. 2386, 2390–91, 132 L.Ed.2d 564, 574 (1995) (). Reasonableness thus “depends on the context within which a search takes place,” and while probable cause and a warrant may render a search reasonable, certain limited circumstances require neither. T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 337, 340, 105 S.Ct. at 740, 742, 83 L.Ed.2d at 731, 734. Public schools are one context where balancing government against private interests “suggests that the public interest is best served by a Fourth Amendment standard of reasonableness that stops short of probable cause.” Id. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 742, 83 L.Ed.2d at 734.
Although schoolchildren have legitimate expectations of privacy and public school officials are state actors subject to the Fourth Amendment, the Court in T.L.O. explained that “the special needs of the school environment require assessment of the legality of such searches against a standard less exacting than that of probable cause.” Id. at 333 n. 2, 105 S.Ct. at 738 n. 2, 83 L.Ed.2d at 728–29 n. 2. Instead, the legality of a student search is governed by the reasonableness under the circumstances, which is a two-part inquiry: (1) was the action “justified at its inception”; and (2), was “the search, as actually conducted ... reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” Id. at 341, 105 S.Ct. at 743, 83 L.Ed.2d at 734 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted).
Under ordinary circumstances, a search of a student by a teacher or other school official 3 will be “justified at its inception” when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school. Such a search will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.
Id. at 341–42, 105 S.Ct. at 743, 83 L.Ed.2d at 734–35 (emphasis added). Under this test, the search of fourteen-year-old T.L.O.'s purse by the assistant principal was justified at its inception where a teacher had accused T.L.O. and another student of smoking in the restroom; the other student admitted the charge but T.L.O. denied it; a cursory search of T.L.O.'s purse revealed a pack of cigarettes and package of cigarette rolling papers, known to the administrator to implicate drug use; and marijuana was found upon a subsequent, more thorough search of T.L.O.'s purse. Id. at 328, 105 S.Ct. at 735–36, 83 L.Ed.2d at 726. Based on the facts, the Court did not decide if the reasonableness inquiry requires individualized suspicion. See T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 342 n. 8, 105 S.Ct. at 743 n. 8, 83 L.Ed.2d at 735 n. 8 (...
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