Lead Opinion
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We granted certiorari in this case to examine the appropriateness of the exclusionary rule as a remedy for searches carried out in violation of the Fourth Amendment by public school authorities. Our consideration of the proper application of the Fourth Amendment to the public schools, however, has led us to conclude that the search that gave rise to
I
On March 7, 1980, a teacher at Piscataway High School in Middlesex County, N. J., discovered two girls smoking in a lavatory. One of the two girls was the respondent T. L. 0., who at that time was a 14-year-old high school freshman. Because smoking in the lavatory was a violation of a school rule, the teacher took the two girls to the Principal’s office, where they met with Assistant Vice Principal Theodore Choplick. In response to questioning by Mr. Choplick, T. L. O.’s companion admitted that she had violated the rule. T. L. 0., however, denied that she had been smoking in the lavatory and claimed that she did not smoke at all.
Mr. Choplick asked T. L. O. to come into his private office and demanded to see her purse. Opening the purse, he found a pack of cigarettes, which he removed from the purse and held before T. L. O. as he accused her of having lied to him. As he reached into the purse for the cigarettes, Mr. Choplick also noticed a package of cigarette rolling papers. In his experience, possession of rolling papers by high school students was closely associated with the use of marihuana. Suspecting that a closer examination of the purse might yield further evidence of drug use, Mr. Choplick proceeded to search the purse thoroughly. The search revealed a smáll amount of marihuana, a pipe, a number of empty plastic bags, a substantial quantity of money in one-dollar bills, an index card that appeared to be a list of students who owed T. L. O. money, and two letters that implicated T. L. O. in marihuana dealing.
Mr. Choplick notified T. L. O.’s mother and the police, and turned the evidence of drug dealing over to the police. At
“a school official may properly conduct a search of a student’s person if the official has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is in the process of being committed, or reasonable cause to believe that the search is necessary to maintain school discipline or enforce school policies.” Id., at 341,428 A. 2d, at 1333 (emphasis in original).
Applying this standard, the court concluded that the search conducted by Mr. Choplick was a reasonable one. The initial decision to open the purse was justified by Mr. Choplick’s well-founded suspicion that T. L. O. had violated the rule forbidding smoking in the lavatory. Once the purse
On appeal from the final judgment of the Juvenile Court, a divided Appellate Division affirmed the trial court’s finding that there had been no Fourth Amendment violation, but vacated the adjudication of delinquency and remanded for a determination whether T. L. O. had knowingly and voluntarily waived her Fifth Amendment rights before confessing. State ex rel. T. L. O., 185 N. J. Super. 279,
The New Jersey Supreme Court agreed with the lower courts that the Fourth Amendment applies to searches conducted by school officials. The court also rejected the State of New Jersey’s argument that the exclusionary rule should not be employed to prevent the use in juvenile proceedings of evidence unlawfully seized by school officials. Declining to consider whether applying the rule to the fruits of searches by school officials would have any deterrent value, the court held simply that the precedents of this Court establish that “if an official search violates constitutional rights, the evidence is not admissible in criminal proceedings.” Id., at 341,
With respect to the question of the legality of the search before it, the court agreed with the Juvenile Court that a warrantless search by a school official does not violate the Fourth Amendment so long as the official “has reasonable grounds to believe that a student possesses evidence of illegal
We granted the State of New Jersey’s petition for certio-rari.
II
In determining whether the search at issue in this case violated the Fourth Amendment, we are faced initially with the question whether that Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches conducted by public school officials. We hold that it does.
“The Fourteenth Amendment, as now applied to the States, protects the citizen against the State itself and all of its creatures — Boards of Education not excepted. These have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights. That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.” West Virginia State Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette,319 U. S. 624 , 637 (1943).
These two propositions — that the Fourth Amendment applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the actions of public school officials are subject to the limits placed on state action by the Fourteenth Amendment — might appear sufficient to answer the suggestion that the Fourth Amendment does not proscribe unreasonable searches by school officials. On reargument, however, the State of New Jersey has argued that the history of the Fourth Amendment indicates that the Amendment was intended to regulate only searches and seizures carried out by law enforcement officers; accordingly, although public school officials are concededly state agents for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment creates no rights enforceable against them.
Such reasoning is in tension with contemporary reality and the teachings of this Court. We have held school officials subject to the commands of the First Amendment, see Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District,
Ill
To hold that the Fourth Amendment applies to searches conducted by school authorities is only to begin the inquiry into the standards governing such searches. Although the underlying command of the Fourth Amendment is always that searches and seizures be reasonable, what is reasonable depends on the context within which a search takes place. The determination of the standard of reasonableness governing any specific class of searches requires “balancing the need to search against the invasion which the search entails.” Camara v. Municipal Court, supra, at 536-537. 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.
We have recognized that even a limited search of the person is a substantial invasion of privacy. Terry v. Ohio,
. Of course, the Fourth Amendment does not protect subjective expectations of privacy that are unreasonable or otherwise “illegitimate.” See, e. g., Hudson v. Palmer,
Although this Court may take notice of the difficulty of maintaining discipline in the public schools today, the situation is not so dire that students in the schools may claim no legitimate expectations of privacy. We have recently recognized that the need to maintain order in a prison is such that prisoners retain no legitimate expectations of privacy in their cells, but it goes almost without saying that “[tjhe prisoner and the schoolchild stand in wholly different circumstances, separated by the harsh facts of criminal conviction and incarceration.” Ingraham v. Wright, supra, at 669. We are not
Nor does the State’s suggestion that children have no legitimate need to bring personal property into the schools seem well anchored in reality. Students 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. In addition, students may carry on their persons or in purses or wallets such nondisruptive yet highly personal items as photographs, letters, and diaries. Finally, students may have perfectly legitimate reasons to carry with them articles of property needed in connection with extracurricular or recreational activities. In short, schoolchildren may find it necessary to carry with them a variety of legitimate, noncontraband items, and there is no reason to conclude that they have necessarily waived all rights to privacy in such items merely by bringing them onto school grounds.
Against the child’s interest in privacy must be set the substantial interest of teachers and administrators in maintaining discipline in the classroom and on school grounds. Maintaining order in the classroom has never been easy, but in recent years, school disorder has often taken particularly ugly forms: drug use and violent crime in the schools have become major social problems. See generally 1 NIE, U. S. Dept, of Health, Education and Welfare, Violent Schools— Safe Schools: The Safe School Study Report to the Congress (1978). Even in schools that have been spared the most severe disciplinary problems, the preservation of order and a proper educational environment requires close supervision of schoolchildren, as well as the enforcement of rules against conduct that would be perfectly permissible if undertaken by an adult. “Events calling for discipline are frequent occurrences and sometimes require immediate, effective action.” Goss v. Lopez,
How, then, should we strike the balance between the schoolchild’s legitimate expectations of privacy and the school’s equally legitimate need to maintain an environment in which learning can take place? It is evident that the school setting requires some easing of the restrictions to which searches by public authorities are ordinarily subject. The warrant requirement, in particular, is unsuited to the school environment: requiring a teacher to obtain a warrant before searching a child suspected of an infraction of school rules (or of the criminal law) would unduly interfere with the maintenance of the swift and informal disciplinary procedures needed in the schools. Just as we have in other cases dispensed with the warrant requirement when “the burden of obtaining a warrant is likely to frustrate the governmental purpose behind the search,” Camara v. Municipal Court,
The school setting also requires some modification of the level of suspicion of illicit activity needed to justify a search. Ordinarily, a search — even one that may permissibly be carried out without a warrant — must be based upon “probable cause” to believe that a violation of the law has occurred. See, e. g., Almeida-Sanchez v. United States,
We join the majority of courts that have examined this issue
This standard will, we trust, neither unduly burden the efforts of school authorities to maintain order in their schools
IV
There remains the question of the legality of the search in this case. We recognize that the “reasonable grounds” standard applied by the New Jersey Supreme Court in its consideration of this question is not substantially different from the standard that we have adopted today. Nonetheless, we believe that the New Jersey court’s application of that standard to strike down the search of T. L. O.’s purse reflects a somewhat crabbed notion of reasonableness. Our review of the facts surrounding the search leads us to conclude that the search was in no sense unreasonable for Fourth Amendment purposes.
The incident that gave rise to this case actually involved two separate searches, with the first — the search for cigarettes — providing the suspicion that gave rise to the sec
The New Jersey Supreme Court pointed to two grounds for its holding that the search for cigarettes was unreasonable. First, the court observed that possession of cigarettes was not in itself illegal or a violation of school rules. Because the contents of T. L. O.’s purse would therefore have “no direct bearing on the infraction” of which she was accused (smoking in a lavatory where smoking was prohibited), there was no reason to search her purse.
Both these conclusions are implausible. T. L. O. had been accused of smoking, and had denied the accusation in the strongest possible terms when she stated that she did not smoke at all. Surely it cannot be said that under these circumstances, T. L. O.’s possession of cigarettes would be irrelevant to the charges against her or to her response to those charges. T. L. O.’s possession of cigarettes, once it was discovered, would both corroborate the report that she had been smoking and undermine the credibility of her defense to the charge of smoking. To be sure, the discovery of the cigarettes would not prove that T. L. O. had been smoking in the lavatory; nor would it, strictly speaking, necessarily be inconsistent with her claim that she did not smoke at all. But it is universally recognized that evidence, to be relevant to an inquiry, need not conclusively prove the ultimate fact in issue, but only have “any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Fed. Rule Evid. 401. The relevance of T. L. O.’s possession of cigarettes to the question whether she had been smoking and to the credibility of her denial that she smoked supplied the necessary “nexus” between the item searched for and the infraction under investigation. See Warden v. Hayden,
Of course, the New Jersey Supreme Court also held that Mr. Chopliek had no reasonable suspicion that the purse would contain cigarettes. This conclusion is puzzling. A teacher had reported that T. L. O. was smoking in the lavatory. Certainly this report gave Mr. Chopliek reason to suspect that T. L. O. was carrying cigarettes with her; and
Because the search resulting in the discovery of the evidence of marihuana dealing by T. L. O. was reasonable, the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision to exclude that evi
Reversed.
Notes
T. L. O. also received a 3-day suspension from school for smoking cigarettes in a nonsmoking area and a 7-day suspension for possession of marihuana. On T. L. O.’s motion, the Superior Court of New Jersey, Chancery Division, set aside the 7-day suspension on the ground that it was based on evidence seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment. (T. L. O.) v. Piscataway Bd. of Ed., No. C.2865-79 (Super. Ct. N. J., Ch. Div., Mar. 31, 1980). The Board of Education apparently did not appeal the decision of the Chancery Division.
State and federal courts considering these questions have struggled to accommodate the interests protected by the Fourth Amendment and the interest of the States in providing a safe environment conducive to education in the public schools. Some courts have resolved the tension between these interests by giving full force to one or the other side of the balance. Thus, in a number of cases courts have held that school officials conducting in-school searches of students are private parties acting in loco parentis and are therefore not subject to the constraints of the Fourth Amendment. See, e. g., D. R. C. v. State,
The majority of courts that have addressed the issue of the Fourth Amendment in the schools have, like the Supreme Court of New Jersey in this case, reached a middle position: the Fourth Amendment applies to searches conducted by school authorities, but 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. These courts have, by and large, upheld warrantless searches by school authorities provided that they are supported by a reasonable suspicion that the search will uncover evidence of an infraction of school disciplinary rules or a violation of the law. See, e. g., Tarter v. Baybuck, No. 83-3174 (CA6, Aug. 31, 1984); Bilbrey v. Brown,
Although few have considered the matter, courts have also split over whether the exclusionary rule is an appropriate remedy for Fourth Amendment violations committed by school authorities. The Georgia courts have held that although the Fourth Amendment applies to the schools, the exclusionary rule does not. See, e. g., State v. Young, supra; State v. Lamb,
In holding that the search of T. L. O.’s purse did not violate the Fourth Amendment, we do not implicitly determine that the exclusionary rule applies to the fruits of unlawful searches conducted by school authorities. . The question whether evidence should be excluded from a criminal proceeding involves two discrete inquiries: whether the evidence was seized in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and whether the exclusionary rule is the appropriate remedy for the violation. Neither question'is logically antecedent to the other, for a negative answer to either question is sufficient to dispose of the case. Thus, our determination that the search at issue in this case did not violate the Fourth Amendment implies no particular resolution of the question of the applicability of the exclusionary rule.
Cf. Ingraham v. Wright,
We do not address the question, not presented by this case, whether a schoolchild has a legitimate expectation of privacy in lockers, desks, or other school property provided for the storage of school supplies. Nor do we express any opinion on the standards (if any) governing searches of such areas by school officials or by other public authorities acting at the request of school officials. Compare Zamora v. Pomeroy,
See eases cited in n. 2, supra.
We here consider only searches carried out by school authorities acting alone and on their own authority. This case does not present the question of the appropriate standard for assessing the legality of searches conducted by school officials in conjunction with or at the behest of law enforcement agencies, and we express no opinion on that question. Cf. Picha v. Wielgos,
We do not decide whether individualized suspicion is an essential element of the reasonableness standard we adopt for searches by school authorities. In other contexts, however, we have held that although “some quantum of individualized suspicion is usually a prerequisite to a constitutional search or seizure[,]. . . the Fourth Amendment imposes no irreducible requirement of such suspicion.” United States v. Martinez-Fuerte,
Our reference to the nature of the infraction is not intended as an endorsement of Justice Stevens’ suggestion that some rules regarding student conduct are by nature too “trivial” to justify a search based upon reasonable suspicion. See post, at 377-382. We are unwilling to adopt a standard under which the legality of a search is dependent upon a judge’s evaluation of the relative importance of various school rules. The maintenance of discipline in the schools requires not only that students be restrained from assaulting one another, abusing drugs and alcohol, and committing other crimes, but also that students conform themselves to the standards of conduct prescribed by school authorities. We have “repeatedly emphasized the need for affirming the comprehensive authority of the States and of school officials, consistent with fundamental constitutional safeguards, to prescribe and control conduct in the schools.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District,
Of course, New Jersey may insist on a more demanding standard under its own Constitution or statutes. In that case, its courts would not purport to be applying the Fourth Amendment when they invalidate a search.
Justice Stevens interprets these statements as a holding that enforcement of the school’s smoking regulations was not sufficiently related to the goal of maintaining discipline or order in the school to justify a search under the standard adopted by the New Jersey court. See post, at 382-384. We do not agree that this is an accurate characterization of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s opinion. The New Jersey court did not hold that the school’s smoking rules were unrelated to the goal of maintaining discipline or order, nor did it suggest that a search that would produce evidence bearing directly on an accusation that a student had violated the smoking rules would be impermissible under the court’s reasonable-suspicion standard; rather, the court concluded that any evidence a search of T. L. O.’s purse was likely to produce would not have a sufficiently direct bearing on the infraction to justify a search — a conclusion with which we cannot agree for the reasons set forth infra, at 345. Justice Stevens’ suggestion that the New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision rested on the perceived triviality of the smoking infraction appears to be a reflection of his own views rather than those of the New Jersey court.
T. L. O. contends that even if it was reasonable for Mr. Choplick to open her purse to look for cigarettes, it was not reasonable for him to reach in and take the cigarettes out of her purse once he found them. Had he not removed the cigarettes from the purse, she asserts, he would not have observed the rolling papers that suggested the presence of marihuana, and the search for marihuana could not have taken place. T. L. O.’s argument is based on the fact that the cigarettes were not “contraband,” as no school rule forbade her to have them. Thus, according to T. L. 0., the cigarettes were not subject to seizure or confiscation by school authorities, and Mr. Choplick was not entitled to take them out of T. L. O.’s purse regardless of whether he was entitled to peer into the purse to see if they were there. Such hairsplitting argumentation has no place in an inquiry addressed to the issue of reasonableness. If Mr. Choplick could permissibly search T. L. O.’s purse for cigarettes, it hardly seems reasonable to suggest that his natural reaction to finding them — picking them up — could
Concurrence Opinion
concurring.
I agree with the Court’s decision, and generally with its opinion. I would place greater emphasis, however, on the special characteristics of elementary and secondary schools that make it unnecessary to afford students the same constitutional protections granted adults and juveniles in a nonschool setting.
In any realistic sense, students within the school environment have a lesser expectation of privacy than members of the population generally. They spend the school hours in close association with each other, both in the classroom and during recreation periods. The students in a particular class often know each other and their teachers quite well. Of necessity, teachers have a degree of familiarity with, and authority over, their students that is unparalleled except perhaps in the relationship between parent and child. It is simply unrealistic to think that students have the same subjective expectation of privacy as the population generally. But for purposes of deciding this case, I can assume that children in school — no less than adults — have privacy interests that society is prepared to recognize as legitimate.
However one may characterize their privacy expectations, students properly are afforded some constitutional protections. In an often quoted statement, the Court said that students do not “shed their constitutional rights ... at the schoolhouse gate.” Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District,
In Goss v. Lopez,
The special relationship between teacher and student also distinguishes the setting within which schoolchildren operate. Law enforcement officers function as adversaries of criminal suspects. These officers have the responsibility to investigate criminal activity, to locate and arrest those who violate our laws, and to facilitate the charging and bringing of such persons to trial. Rarely does this type of adversarial
The primary duty of school officials and teachers, as the Court states, is the education and training of young people. A State has a compelling interest in assuring that the schools meet this responsibility. Without first establishing discipline and maintaining order, teachers cannot begin to educate their students. And apart from education, the school has the obligation to protect pupils from mistreatment by other children, and also to protect teachers themselves from violence by the few students whose conduct in recent years has prompted national concern. For me, it would be unreasonable and at odds with history to argue that the full panoply of constitutional rules applies with the same force and effect in the schoolhouse as it does in the enforcement of criminal laws.
In sum, although I join the Court’s opinion and its holding,
Unlike police officers, school authorities have no law enforcement responsibility or indeed any obligation to be familiar with the criminal laws. Of course, as illustrated by this case, school authorities have a layman’s familiarity with the types of crimes that occur frequently in our schools: the distribution and use of drugs, theft, and even violence against teachers as well as fellow students.
As noted above, decisions of this Court have never held to the contrary. The law recognizes a host of distinctions between the rights and duties of children and those of adults. See Goss v. Lopez,
The Court’s holding is that “when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that [a] search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school,” a search of'the student’s person or belongings is justified. Ante, at 342. This is in accord with the Court’s summary of the views of a majority of the state and federal courts that have addressed this issue. See ante, at 332-333, n. 2.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in the judgment.
I join the judgment of the Court and agree with much that is said in its opinion. I write separately, however, because I believe the Court omits a crucial step in its analysis of whether a school search must be based upon probable cause. The Court correctly states that we have recognized limited exceptions to the probable-cause requirement “[w]here a careful balancing of governmental and private interests suggests that the public interest is best served” by a lesser standard. Ante, at 341. I believe that we have used such a balancing test, rather than strictly applying the Fourth Amendment’s Warrant and Probable-Cause Clause, only when we were confronted with “a special law enforcement need for greater flexibility.” Florida v. Royer,
“While the Fourth Amendment speaks in terms of freedom from unreasonable [searches], the Amendment does not leave the reasonableness of most [searches] to the judgment of courts or government officers; the Framers of the Amendment balanced the interests involved and decided that a [search] is reasonable only if supported by a judicial warrant based on probable cause. See Texas v. Brown,460 U. S. 730 , 744-745 (1983) (Powell, J., concurring); United States v. Rabinomtz,339 U. S. 56 , 70 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting).” Id., at 722 (opinion concurring in judgment).
See also Dunaway v. New York,
The Court’s implication that the balancing test is the rule rather than the exception is troubling for me because it is unnecessary in this case. The elementary and secondary school setting presents a special need for flexibility justifying a departure from the balance struck by the Framers. As Justice Powell notes, “[without first establishing discipline and maintaining order, teachers cannot begin to educate their students.” Ante, at 350. Maintaining order in the classroom can be a difficult task. A single teacher often must watch over a large number of students, and, as any parent knows, children at certain ages are inclined to test the outer boundaries of acceptable conduct and to imitate the misbehavior of a peer if that misbehavior is not dealt with quickly. Every adult remembers from his own schooldays the havoc a water pistol or peashooter can wreak until it is taken away. Thus, the Court has recognized that “[ejvents calling for discipline are frequent occurrences and sometimes require immediate, effective action.” Goss v. Lopez,
Such immediate action obviously would not be possible if a teacher were required to secure a warrant before searching a student. Nor would it be possible if a teacher could not conduct a necessary search until the teacher thought there was probable cause for the search. A teacher has neither the training nor the day-to-day experience in the complexities of probable cause that a law enforcement officer possesses, and is ill-equipped to make a quick judgment about the existence of probable cause. The time required for a teacher to ask the questions or make the observations that are necessary to turn reasonable grounds into probable cause is time during which the teacher, and other students, are diverted from the essential task of education. A teacher’s focus is, and should be, on teaching and helping students, rather than on developing evidence against a particular troublemaker.
Education “is perhaps the most important function” of government, Brown v. Board of Education,
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I fully agree with Part II of the Court’s opinion. Teachers, like all other government officials, must conform their
I do not, however, otherwise join the Court’s opinion. Today’s decision sanctions school officials to conduct full-scale searches on a “reasonableness” standard whose only definite content is that it is not the same test as the “probable cause” standard found in the text of the Fourth Amendment. In adopting this unclear, unprecedented, and unnecessary departure from generally applicable Fourth Amendment standards, the Court carves out a broad exception to standards that this Court has developed over years of considering Fourth Amendment problems. Its decision is supported neither by precedent nor even by a fair application of the “balancing test” it proclaims in this very opinion.
I
Three basic principles underly this Court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. First, warrantless searches are per se unreasonable, subject only to a few specifically delineated and well-recognized exceptions. See, e. g., Katz v. United States,
Assistant Vice Principal Choplick’s thorough excavation of T. L. O.’s purse was undoubtedly a serious intrusion on her privacy. Unlike the searches in Terry v. Ohio, supra, or Adams v. Williams,
A
I agree that schoolteachers or principals, when not acting as agents of law enforcement authorities, generally may conduct a search of their students’ belongings without first
In this case, such extraordinary governmental interests do exist and are sufficient to justify an exception to the warrant requirement. Students are necessarily confined for most of the schoolday in close proximity to each other and to the school staff. I agree with the Court that we can take judicial notice of the serious problems of drugs and violence that plague our schools. As Justice Blackmun notes, teachers must not merely “maintain an environment conducive to learning” among children who “are inclined to test the outer boundaries of acceptable conduct,” but must also “protect the very safety of students and school personnel.” Ante, at 352-353. A teacher or principal could neither carry out essential teaching functions nor adequately protect students’ safety if required to wait for a warrant before conducting a necessary search.
B
I emphatically disagree with the Court’s decision to east aside the constitutional probable-cause standard when assessing the constitutional validity of a schoolhouse search. The Court’s decision jettisons the probable-cause standard— the only standard that finds support in the text of the Fourth
1
An unbroken line of cases in this Court have held that probable cause is a prerequisite for a full-scale search. In Carroll v. United States,
Our holdings that probable cause is a prerequisite to a full-scale search are based on the relationship between the two Clauses of the Fourth Amendment. The first Clause (“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . .”) states the purpose of the Amendment and its coverage. The second Clause (“. . . and no Warrants shall issue but upon probable cause . . .”) gives content to the word “unreasonable” in the first Clause. “For all but . . . narrowly defined intrusions, the requisite ‘balancing’ has been performed in centuries of precedent and is embodied in the principle that seizures are ‘reasonable’ only if supported by probable cause.” Dunaway v. New York,
I therefore fully agree with the Court that “the underlying command of the Fourth Amendment is always that searches and seizures be reasonable.” Ante, at 337. But this “underlying command” is not directly interpreted in each category of cases by some amorphous “balancing test.” Rather, the provisions of the Warrant Clause — a warrant and probable cause — provide the yardstick against which official searches
To be sure, the Court recognizes that probable cause “ordinarily” is required to justify a full-scale search and that the existence of probable cause “bears on” the validity of the search. Ante, at 340-341. Yet the Court fails to cite any case in which a full-scale intrusion upon privacy interests has been justified on less than probable cause. The line of cases begun by Terry v. Ohio,
Nor do the “administrative search” cases provide any comfort for the Court. In Camara v. Municipal Court,
Considerations of the deepest significance for the freedom of our citizens counsel strict adherence to the principle that no search may be conducted where the official is not in possession of probable cause — that is, where the official does not know of “facts and circumstances [that] warrant a prudent man in believing that the offense has been committed.” Henry v. United States,
2
I thus do not accept the majority’s premise that “[t]o hold that the Fourth Amendment applies to searches conducted by school authorities is only to begin the inquiry into the standards governing such searches.” Ante, at 337. For me, the finding that the Fourth Amendment applies, coupled with the observation that what is at issue is a full-scale search, is the end of the inquiry. But even if I believed that a “balancing test” appropriately replaces the judgment of the Framers of the Fourth Amendment, I would nonetheless object to the cursory and shortsighted “test” that the Court employs to justify its predictable weakening of Fourth Amendment protections. In particular, the test employed by the Court vastly overstates the social costs that a probable-cause standard entails and, though it plausibly articulates the serious privacy interests at stake, inexplicably fails to accord them adequate weight in striking the balance.
In order to tote up the costs of applying the probable-cause standard, it is thus necessary first to take into account the nature and content of that standard, and the likelihood that it would hamper achievement of the goal — vital not just to “teachers and administrators,” see ante, at 339 — of maintaining an effective educational setting in the public schools. The seminal statement concerning the nature of the probable-cause standard is found in Carroll v. United States,
Two Terms ago, in Illinois v. Gates,
Ignoring what Gates took such great pains to emphasize, the Court today holds that a new “reasonableness” standard is appropriate because it “will spare teachers and school administrators the necessity of schooling themselves in the niceties of probable cause and permit them to regulate their conduct according to the dictates of reason and common sense.” Ante, at 343. I had never thought that our pre-Gates understanding of probable cause defied either reason or common sense. But after Gates, I would have thought that there could be no doubt that this “nontechnical,” “practical,” and “easily applied” concept was eminently serviceable in a context like a school, where teachers require the flexibility to respond quickly and decisively to emergencies.
A consideration of the likely operation of the probable-cause standard reinforces this conclusion. Discussing the issue of school searches, Professor LaFave has noted that the cases that have reached the appellate courts “strongly suggest that in most instances the evidence of wrongdoing prompting teachers or principals to conduct searches is sufficiently detailed and specific to meet the traditional probable cause test.” 3 W. LaFave, Search and Seizure § 10.11,
As compared with the relative ease with which teachers can apply the probable-cause standard, the amorphous “reasonableness under all the circumstances” standard freshly coined by the Court today will likely spawn increased litigation and greater uncertainty among teachers and administrators. Of course, as this Court should know, an essential purpose of developing and articulating legal norms is to enable individuals to conform their conduct to those norms. A school system conscientiously attempting to obey the Fourth Amendment’s dictates under a probable-cause standard could, for example, consult decisions and other legal materials and prepare a booklet expounding the rough outlines of the concept. Such a booklet could be distributed to
One further point should be taken into account when considering the desirability of replacing the constitutional probable-cause standard. The question facing the Court is not whether the probable-cause standard should be replaced by a test of “reasonableness under all the circumstances.” Rather, it is whether traditional Fourth Amendment standards should recede before the Court’s new standard. Thus, although the Court today paints with a broad brush and holds its undefined “reasonableness” standard applicable to all school searches, I would approach the question with considerably more reserve. I would not think it necessary to develop a single standard to govern all school searches, any more
A legitimate balancing test whose function was something more substantial than reaching a predetermined conclusion acceptable to this Court’s impressions of what authority teachers need would therefore reach rather a different result than that reached by the Court today. On one side of the balance would be the costs of applying traditional Fourth Amendment standards — the “practical” and “flexible” probable-cause standard where a full-scale intrusion is sought, a lesser standard in situations where the intrusion is much less severe and the need for greater authority compelling. Whatever costs were toted up on this side would have to be discounted by the costs of applying an unprecedented and ill-defined “reasonableness under all the circumstances” test that will leave teachers and administrators uncertain as to their authority and will encourage excessive fact-based litigation.
On the other side of the balance would be the serious privacy interests of the student, interests that the Court admirably articulates in its opinion, ante, at 337-339, but which the Court’s new ambiguous standard places in serious jeopardy. I have no doubt that a fair assessment of the two
I — { 1 — I
Applying the constitutional probable-cause standard to the facts of this case, I would find that Mr. Choplick’s search violated T. L. O.’s Fourth Amendment rights. After escorting T. L. O. into his private office, Mr. Choplick demanded to see her purse. He then opened the purse to find evidence of whether she had been smoking in the bathroom. When he opened the purse, he discovered the pack of cigarettes. At this point, his search for evidence of the smoking violation was complete.
Mr. Choplick then noticed, below the cigarettes, a pack of cigarette rolling papers. Believing that such papers were “associated,” see ante, at 328, with the use of marihuana, he proceeded to conduct a detailed examination of the contents of her purse, in which he found some marihuana, a pipe, some money, an index card, and some private letters indicating that T. L. O. had sold marihuana to other students. The State sought to introduce this latter material in evidence at a criminal proceeding, and the issue before the Court is whether it should have been suppressed.
On my view of the case, we need not decide whether the initial search conducted by Mr. Choplick — the search for evidence of the smoking violation that was completed when Mr. Choplick found the pack of cigarettes — was valid. For Mr. Choplick at that point did not have probable cause to continue to rummage through T. L. O.’s purse. Mr. Choplick’s suspicion of marihuana possession at this time was based solely on the presence of the package of cigarette papers. The mere presence without more of such a staple item of commerce is insufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution in inferring both that T. L. O. had violated the law
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In the past several Terms, this Court has produced a succession of Fourth Amendment opinions in which “balancing tests” have been applied to resolve various questions concerning the proper scope of official searches. The Court has begun to apply a “balancing test” to determine whether a particular category of searches intrudes upon expectations of privacy that merit Fourth Amendment protection. See Hudson v. Palmer,
All of these “balancing tests” amount to brief nods by the Court in the direction of a neutral utilitarian calculus while the Court in fact engages in an unanalyzed exercise of judicial will. Perhaps this doctrinally destructive nihilism is merely
On my view, the presence of the word “unreasonable” in the text of the Fourth Amendment does not grant a shifting majority of this Court the authority to answer all Fourth Amendment questions by consulting its momentary vision of the social good. Full-scale searches unaccompanied by probable cause violate the Fourth Amendment. I do not pretend that our traditional Fourth Amendment doctrine automatically answers all of the difficult legal questions that occasionally arise. I do contend, however, that this Court has an obligation to provide some coherent framework to resolve such questions on the basis of more than a conclusory recitation of the results of a “balancing test.” The Fourth Amendment itself supplies that framework and, because the Court today fails to heed its message, I must respectfully dissent.
A purse typically contains items of highly personal nature. Especially for shy or sensitive adolescents, it could prove extremely embarrassing for a teacher or principal to rummage through its contents, which could include notes from friends, fragments of love poems, caricatures of school authorities, and items of personal hygiene.
Administrative search cases involving inspection schemes have recognized that “if inspection is to be effective and serve as a credible deterrent, unannounced, even frequent, inspections are essential. In this context, the prerequisite of a warrant could easily frustrate inspection . . . .” United States v. Biswell,
In fact, despite the somewhat diminished expectation of privacy that this Court has recognized in the automobile context, see South Dakota v. Opperman,
As Justice Stewart said in Coolidge v. New Hampshire,
I speak of the “government’s side” only because it is the terminology used by the Court. In my view, this terminology itself is seriously misleading. The government is charged with protecting the privacy and security of the citizen, just as it is charged with apprehending those who violate the criminal law. Consequently, the government has no legitimate interest in conducting a search that unduly intrudes on the privacy and security of the citizen. The balance is not between the rights of the government and the rights of the citizen, but between opposing conceptions of the constitutionally legitimate means of carrying out the government’s varied responsibilities.
It should be noted that Professor LaFave reached this conclusion in 1978, before this Court’s decision in Gates made clear the “flexibility” of the probable-cause concept.
A comparison of the language of the standard (“reasonableness under all the circumstances”) with the traditional language of probable cause (“facts sufficient to warrant a person of reasonable caution in believing that a crime had been committed and the evidence would be found in the designated place”) suggests that the Court’s new standard may turn out to be probable cause under a new guise. If so, the additional uncertainty caused by this Court’s innovation is surely unjustifiable; it would be naive to expect that the addition of this extra dose of uncertainty would do anything other than “burden the efforts of school authorities to maintain order in their schools,” ante, at 342. If, on the other hand, the new standard permits searches of students in instances when probable cause is absent— instances, according to this Court’s consistent formulations, when a person of reasonable caution would not think it likely that a violation existed or that evidence of that violation would be found — the new standard is genuinely objectionable and impossible to square with the premise that our citizens have the right to be free from arbitrary intrusions on their privacy.
Concurrence Opinion
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
Assistant Vice Principal Choplick searched T. L. O.’s purse for evidence that she was smoking in the girls’ restroom. Because T. L. O.’s suspected misconduct was not illegal and did not pose a serious threat to school discipline, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that Choplick’s search
The State of New Jersey sought review in this Court, first arguing that the exclusionary rule is wholly inapplicable to searches conducted by school officials, and then contending that the Fourth Amendment itself provides no protection at all to the student’s privacy. The Court has accepted neither of these frontal assaults on the Fourth Amendment. It has, however, seized upon this “no smoking” case to announce “the proper standard” that should govern searches by school officials who are confronted with disciplinary problems far more severe than smoking in the restroom. Although I join Part II of the Court’s opinion, I continue to believe that the Court has unnecessarily and inappropriately reached out to decide a constitutional question. See
I
The question the Court decides today — whether Mr. Chop-lick’s search of T. L. O.’s purse violated the Fourth Amendment — was not raised by the State’s petition for writ of certiorari. That petition only raised one question: “Whether the Fourth Amendment’s exclusionary rule applies to searches made by public school officials and teachers in school.”
The New Jersey Supreme Court’s holding on this question is plainly correct. As the state court noted, this case does not involve the use of evidence in a school disciplinary proceeding; the juvenile proceedings brought against T. L. O. involved a charge that would have been a criminal offense if committed by an adult.
Having confined the issue to the law enforcement context, the New Jersey court then reasoned that this Court’s cases have made it quite clear that the exclusionary rule is equally applicable “whether the public official who illegally obtained the evidence was a municipal inspector, See v. Seattle
When a defendant in a criminal proceeding alleges that she was the victim of an illegal search by a school administrator, the application of the exclusionary rule is a simple corollary of the principle that “all evidence obtained by searches and seizures in violation of the Constitution is, by that same authority, inadmissible in a state court.” Mapp v. Ohio,
Justice Brandéis was both a great student and a great teacher. It was he who wrote:
“Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for. law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.” Olmstead v. United States,277 U. S. 438 , 485 (1928) (dissenting opinion).
Those of us who revere the flag and the ideals for which it stands believe in the power of symbols. We cannot ignore that rules of law also have a symbolic power that may vastly exceed their utility.
Schools are places where we inculcate the values essential to the meaningful exercise of rights and responsibilities by a self-governing citizenry.
Thus, the simple and correct answer to the question presented by the State’s petition for certiorari would have required affirmance of a state court’s judgment suppressing evidence. That result would have been dramatically out of character for a Court that not only grants prosecutors relief from suppression orders with distressing regularity,
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The search of a young woman’s purse by a school administrator is a serious invasion of her legitimate expectations of privacy. A purse “is a common repository for one’s personal effects and therefore is inevitably associated with the expectation of privacy.” Arkansas v. Sanders,
The “limited search for weapons” in Terry was justified by the “immediate interest of the police officer in taking steps to assure himself that the person with whom he is dealing is not armed with a weapon that could unexpectedly and fatally be used against him.”
Thus, warrantless searches of students by school administrators are reasonable when undertaken for those purposes.
The majority, however, does not contend that school administrators have a compelling need to search students in
This standard is properly directed at “[t]he sole justification for the [warrantless] search.”
In Welsh, police officers arrived at the scene of a traffic accident and obtained information indicating that the driver of the automobile involved was guilty of a first offense of
. . . The logic of distinguishing between minor and serious offenses in evaluating the reasonableness of school searches is almost too clear for argument. In order to justify the serious intrusion on the persons and privacy of young people that New Jersey asks this Court to approve, the State must identify “some real immediate and serious consequences.” McDonald v. United States,
The “rider” to the Court’s standard for evaluating the reasonableness of the initial intrusion apparently is the Court’s perception that its standard is overly generous and does not, by itself, achieve a fair balance between the administrator’s right to search and the student’s reasonable expectations of privacy. The Court’s standard for evaluating the “scope” of reasonable school searches is obviously designed to prohibit physically intrusive searches of students by persons of the opposite sex for relatively minor offenses. The Court’s effort to establish a standard that is, at once, clear enough to allow searches to be upheld in nearly every case, and flexible enough to prohibit obviously unreasonable intrusions of young adults’ privacy only creates uncertainty in the extent of its resolve to prohibit the latter. Moreover, the majority’s application of its standard in this case — to permit a male administrator to rummage through the purse of a female high school student in order to obtain evidence that she was smok
Ill
The Court embraces the standard applied by the New Jersey Supreme Court as equivalent to-its own, and then deprecates the state court’s application of the standard as reflecting “a somewhat crabbed notion of reasonableness.” Ante, at 343. There is no mystery, however, in the state court’s finding that the search in this case was unconstitutional; the decision below was not based on a manipulation of reasonable suspicion, but on the trivial character of the activity that promoted the official search. The New Jersey Supreme Court wrote:
“We are satisfied that when a school official has reasonable grounds to believe that a student possesses evidence of illegal activity or activity that would interfere with school discipline and order, the school official has the right to conduct a reasonable search for such evidence.
“In determining whether the school official has reasonable grounds, courts should consider The child’s age, history, and school record, the prevalence and seriousness of the problem in the school to which the search was*383 directed, the exigency to make the search without delay, and the probative value and reliability of the information used as a justification for the search.’”26
The emphasized language in the state court’s opinion focuses on the character of the rule infraction that is to be the object of the search.
In the view of the state court, there is a quite obvious and material difference between a search for evidence relating to violent or disruptive activity, and a search for evidence of a smoking rule violation. This distinction does not imply that a no-smoking rule is a matter of minor importance. Rather, like a rule that prohibits a student from being tardy, its occasional violation in a context that poses no threat of disrupting school order and discipline offers no reason to believe that an immediate search is necessary to avoid unlawful conduct, violence, or a serious impairment of the educational process.
A correct understanding of the New Jersey court’s standard explains why that court concluded in T. L. O.’s case that “the assistant principal did not have reasonable grounds to believe that the student was concealing in her purse evidence of criminal activity or evidence of activity that would seriously interfere with school discipline or order.”
“A student has an expectation of privacy in the contents of her purse. Mere possession of cigarettes did not violate school rule or policy, since the school allowed smoking in designated areas. The contents of the handbag had no direct bearing on the infraction.
“The assistant principal’s desire, legal in itself, to gather evidence to impeach the student’s credibility at a*384 hearing on the disciplinary infraction does not validate the search.”28
Like the New Jersey Supreme Court, I would view this case differently if the Assistant Vice Principal had reason to believe T. L. O.’s purse contained evidence of criminal activity, or of an activity that would seriously disrupt school discipline. There was, however, absolutely no basis for any such assumption — not even a “hunch.”
In this case, Mr. Choplick overreacted to what appeared to be nothing more than a minor infraction — a rule prohibiting smoking in the bathroom of the freshmen’s and sophomores’ building.
A review of the sampling of school search cases relied on by the Court demonstrates how different this case is from those
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The schoolroom is the first opportunity most citizens have to experience the power of government. Through it passes every citizen and public official, from schoolteachers to
I respectfully dissent.
Pet. for Cert. i.
Supplemental Brief for Petitioner 6.
State ex rel. T. L. O., 94 N. J. 331, 337, nn. 1 and 2, 342, n. 5,
Id., at 341,
Id., at 341-342,
See, e. g., Stone v. Powell,
Stone v. Powell,
See Board of Education v. Pico,
Cf. In re Gault,
“We do not know what class petitioner was attending when the police and dogs burst in, but the lesson the school authorities taught her that day will undoubtedly make a greater impression than the one her teacher had hoped to convey. I would grant certiorari to teach petitioner another lesson: that the Fourth Amendment protects ‘[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures’.... Schools cannot expect their students to learn the lessons of good citizenship when the school authorities themselves disregard the fundamental principles underpinning our constitutional freedoms.” Doe v. Renfrow,451 U. S. 1022 , 1027-1028 (1981) (dissenting from denial of certiorari).
Stone v. Powell,
36 U. S. C. § 172 (pledge of allegiance to the flag).
A brief review of the Fourth Amendment cases involving criminal prosecutions since the October Term, 1982, supports the proposition. Compare Florida v. Rodriguez, ante, p. 1 (per curiam); United States v. Leon,
E. g. United States v. Karo,
See also United States v. Brigoni-Ponce,
Cf. ante, at 353 (Blackmun, J., concurring in judgment) (“The special need for an immediate response to behavior that threatens either the safety of schoolchildren and teachers or the educational process itself justifies the Court in excepting school searches from the warrant and probable-cause requirement”); ante, at 350 (Powell, J., concurring, joined by O’Connor, J.) (“Without first establishing discipline and maintaining order, teachers cannot begin to educate their students”).
Parent-Student Handbook of Piscataway [N. J.] H. S. (1979), Record Doc. S-l, p. 7. A brief survey of school rule books reveals that, under the majority’s approach, teachers and school administrators may also search students to enforce school rules regulating:
(i) secret societies;
(ii) students driving to school;
(iii) parking and use of parking lots during school hours;
(iv) smoking on campus;
(v) the direction of traffic in the hallways;
(vi) student presence in the hallways during class hours without a pass;
(vii) profanity;
(viii) school attendance of interscholastic athletes on the day of a game, meet or match;
(ix) cafeteria use and cleanup;
(x) eating lunch off-campus; and
(xi) unauthorized absence.
See id., at 7-18; Student Handbook of South Windsor [Conn.] H. S. (1984); Fairfax County [Va.] Public Schools, Student Responsibilities and Rights (1980); Student Handbook of Chantilly [Va.] H. S. (1984).
Cf. Camara v. Municipal Court,
See Goss v. Lopez,
“The sad truth is that many classrooms across the country are not temples of learning teaching the lessons of good will, civility, and wisdom that are central to the fabric of American life. To the contrary, many schools are in such a state of disorder that not only is the educational atmosphere polluted, but the very safety of students and teachers is imperiled.” Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 23.
See also Brief for National Education Association as Amicus Curiae 21 (“If a suspected violation of a rule threatens to disrupt the school or threatens to harm students, school officials should be free to search for evidence of it”).
Terry v. Ohio,
Throughout the criminal law this dichotomy has been expressed by classifying crimes as misdemeanors or felonies, malum prohibitum or malum in se, crimes that do not involve moral turpitude or those that do, and major or petty offenses. See generally W. LaFave, Handbook on Criminal Law § 6 (1972).
Some codes of student behavior also provide a system of graduated response by distinguishing between violent, unlawful, or seriously disruptive conduct, and conduct that will only warrant serious sanctions when the student engages in repetitive offenses. See, e. g., Parent-Student Handbook of Piscataway [N. J.] H. S. (1979), Record Doc. S-l, pp. 15-16; Student Handbook of South Windsor [Conn.] H. S. ¶ E (1984); Rules of the Board of Education of the District of Columbia, Ch. IV, §§431.1-.10 (1982). Indeed, at Piscataway High School a violation of smoking regulations that is “[a] student’s first offense will result in assignment of up to three (3) days of after school classes concerning hazards of smoking.” Record Doc. S-l, swpra, at 15.
In Goss v. Lopez,
“[A]s a general rule notice and hearing should precede removal of the student from school. We agree . . . , however, that there are recurring situations in which prior notice and hearing cannot be insisted upon. Students whose presence poses a continuing danger to, persons or property or an ongoing threat of disrupting the academic process may be immediately removed from school. In such cases the necessary notice and rudimentary hearing should follow as soon as practicable . . . .”
In McDonald police officers made a warrantless search of the office of an illegal “numbers” operation. Justice Jackson rejected the view that the search could be supported by exigent circumstances:
“Even if one were to conclude that urgent circumstances might justify a forced entry without a warrant, no such emergency was present in this case. . . . Whether there is reasonable necessity for a search without waiting to obtain a warrant certainly depends somewhat upon the gravity of the offense thought to be in progress as well as the hazards of the method of attempting to reach it. . . . [The defendant’s] criminal operation, while a shabby swindle that the police are quite right in suppressing, was not one which endangered life or limb or the peace and good order of the community ____”335 U. S., at 459-460 .
While a policeman who sees a person smoking in an elevator in violation of a city ordinance may conduct a full-blown search for evidence of the
One thing is clear under any standard — the shocking strip searches that are described in some cases have no place in the schoolhouse. See Doe v. Renfrow,
94 N. J., at 346,
94 N. J., at 347,
Ibid. The court added:
“Moreover, there were not reasonable grounds to believe that the purse contained cigarettes, if they were the object of the search. No one had furnished information to that effect to the school official. He had, at best, a good hunch. No doubt good hunches would unearth much more evidence of crime on the persons of students and citizens as a whole. But more is required to sustain a search.” Id., at 347,463 A. 2d, at 942-943 .
It is this portion of the New Jersey Supreme Court’s reasoning — a portion that was not necessary to its holding — to which this Court makes its principal response. See ante, at 345-346. S. 18
See Parent-Student Handbook of Piscataway [N. J.] H. S. 15, 18 (1979), Record Doc. S-l. See also Tr. of Mar. 31, 1980, Hearing 13-14.
See, e. g., Tarter v. Raybuck,
See, e. g., In re L. L.,
See, e. g., State v. Young,