Independently destroys a bunch of legal protections.

A. The U.S. Supreme Court Has Weakened Students’ Fourth Amendment Rights An important driving force behind the proliferation of intense surveillance measures in schools is the decline of students’ Fourth Amendment rights. Over the last three decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has rendered a series of decisions that provided school officials with more discretion to promote orderly, safe environments.41 For example, the Court has held that school officials do not need to obtain a search warrant, meet the probable cause standard, or have an individualized suspicion that a student is involved in illicit activity before conducting a search.42 These decisions allow school officials to legally create intense surveillance environments in their schools, even when those environments may not serve students’ best interests.43 They also allow school officials to provide evidence of wrongdoing to prosecutors that they obtained from searching students under circumstances that might have rendered that evidence inadmissible if it had been obtained under similar circumstances outside of the school context.44 The Court addressed students’ Fourth Amendment rights in schools for the first time in New Jersey v. T.L.O.45 There, after a teacher spotted two students smoking in the bathroom, the teacher promptly escorted the students to the principal’s office.46 T.L.O.’s companion admitted to a school official that she had been smoking, but T.L.O. denied the allegations.47 The school official demanded that T.L.O. hand over her purse and, after T.L.O. complied, the school official searched through its contents and uncovered a package of cigarettes, a small amount of marijuana, a substantial amount of one-dollar bills, a list of students who owed money to T.L.O, and two letters indicating that T.L.O. was dealing marijuana.48 When the state of New Jersey brought juvenile delinquency charges against T.L.O., T.L.O. moved to suppress the evidence the school official obtained, claiming that it resulted from an unlawful search.49 After determining that students do indeed hold Fourth Amendment rights in schools,50 the Court concluded that the school official’s search complied with the Fourth Amendment.51 Although the Court acknowledged students’ legitimate expectations of privacy in the belongings they bring to school and in their persons,52 the Court held that these expectations of privacy must be balanced against educators’ need to maintain order and discipline so that learning can take place.53 Accordingly, it held that school officials do not need to obtain a warrant before searching a student.54 It further held that a school official’s suspicion of student wrongdoing does not need to rise to the level of probable cause before she can conduct a search.55 Rather, a court should determine whether a search was reasonable under the circumstances by applying a twofold inquiry: (1) “whether the . . . action was justified at its inception,” and (2) whether the search “was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.”56 The next U.S. Supreme Court decision to evaluate students’ Fourth Amendment rights, Vernonia School District 47J v. Acton, 57 involved a very different set of circumstances. Rather than examining the constitutionality of a search performed on an individual student, it examined the legality of a school district’s random, suspicionless drug-testing program on students participating in interscholastic sports programs.58 In a 6–3 decision authored by Justice Scalia, the Court declined to hold that individualized suspicion was essential to conduct a lawful search.59 Rather, the Court held that it must balance a search’s “intrusion on the individual’s Fourth Amendment interests against its promotion of legitimate governmental interests.”60 It then set forth the following three factors for courts to consider: (1) “the scope of the legitimate expectation of privacy at issue;” (2) “the character of the intrusion that is complained of;” and (3) “the nature and immediacy of the governmental concern at issue . . . and the efficacy of this means for meeting it.”61 Evaluating each of these factors, the Court first acknowledged that students retain an expectation of privacy while at school, but explained that the scope of their Fourth Amendment rights is “different in public schools than elsewhere” because of “the schools’ custodial and tutelary responsibility for children.”62 The Court reasoned that because students must submit to various physical examinations, including vision, hearing, dental, dermatological, and scoliosis screenings, their expectations of privacy in schools, “[p]articularly with regard to medical examinations and procedures,” are reduced.63 Second, the Court concluded that the drug tests were minimally intrusive because drug testing resembled conditions that students often face when using public restrooms; their purpose was limited only to ascertain whether a student athlete was using drugs, and the test results were disclosed only to a limited number of school officials, not law enforcement officers.64 Third, the Court concluded that the school district’s interest in deterring student drug use, especially among student athletes, was important in light of drugs’ physical, psychological, and addictive effects.65 The Court also concluded that the school district’s concern was immediate because “a large segment of the student body, particularly those involved in interscholastic athletics, was in a state of rebellion . . . [which] was being fueled by alcohol and drug abuse.”66 Thus, according to the Court, these considerations outweighed any privacy rights those students possessed.67 Seven years later, in Board of Education v. Earls, the Court again evaluated the constitutionality of a random, suspicionless drug-testing program.68 This drug-testing program, however, was broader than the drug-testing program in Acton because it involved all students participating in extracurricular activities, not just those involved in student athletics.69 The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit determined that the school district’s random, suspicionless drug-testing policy violated the Fourth Amendment because the school district had not demonstrated that there was an identifiable drug abuse problem among students who participated in extracurricular activities.70 The U.S. Supreme Court, however, reversed the Tenth Circuit in a 5–4 decision authored by Justice Thomas.71 The Court evaluated the three factors outlined in Acton and largely reached the same conclusions.72 However, the Court’s holding was broader than its holding in Acton. While the Court noted that the school district “presented specific evidence of drug use,”73 it also held that it was unnecessary for the school district to provide evidence of a drug abuse problem before imposing a suspicionless drug-testing policy.74 The Court reasoned that the school district’s program complied with Fourth Amendment jurisprudence because “the nationwide drug epidemic makes the war against drugs a pressing concern in every school.”75 These decisions have paved the way for school officials to legally employ an array of search practices, including performing random, suspicionless searches of students in forms other than random drug tests.76 For example, based on this precedent, lower courts have justified the use of metal detectors in schools77 and searching through students’ lockers.78 Moreover, there are no protections against school officials’ use of a combination of security measures, such as relying on metal detectors, random sweeps, locked gates, law enforcement officers, and surveillance cameras together, even when their combined use may create an intense, prison-like environment that arguably is highly-intrusive, undignified, and inconsistent with a healthy learning atmosphere.79