Can the School Search My Teen's Bag or Phone?

Usually yes for a bag. Under the Supreme Court’s 1985 decision in New Jersey v. T.L.O., a public school official does not need a warrant, probable cause, or your permission to search a student. They need reasonable grounds to suspect the search will turn up evidence of a broken law or school rule, and the search must stay reasonable in scope.

A phone is less settled, and pages that answer it with confidence for every school in the country are claiming more than the cases say. This page sets out what the two Supreme Court school-search cases actually decided, what they left open, and what to ask your district.

What is the rule for a bag?

It comes from New Jersey v. T.L.O., decided 15 January 1985. A teacher found a 14-year-old freshman smoking in a school bathroom, and an assistant vice principal searched her purse.

The Court held three things that still frame every school search in a public school.

• The Fourth Amendment applies. School officials “act as representatives of the State, not merely as surrogates for the parents.”
• No warrant is needed. The Court said a warrant requirement would “unduly interfere with the maintenance of the swift and informal disciplinary procedures needed in the schools.”
• No probable cause is needed either. The legality of a search “should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search.”

Reasonableness has two parts. The search must be “justified at its inception,” which the Court said is usually met “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.” And it must be permissible in scope, meaning “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.”

Note the words “rules of the school.” The suspected evidence does not have to be of a crime. A breach of the code of conduct is enough to start with.

Is there anything a school cannot do?

Yes, and the Court drew one clear line in 2009. In Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, school staff searching for pills had a 13-year-old remove her outer clothing and pull out her bra and the elastic of her underpants. They were looking for prescription-strength and over-the-counter pain relievers banned under school rules.

The Court said the search of her backpack and outer clothing was justified. The search of her underwear was not. The official’s suspicion did not point to danger, or to pills hidden in her underwear, and “the content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion.”

The case also sets the bar for the first part of the test. The Court described reasonable suspicion for a school search as “a moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdoing.”

So the scope question is real. The more intrusive the search, the stronger and more specific the reason has to be.

What about the phone?

Here the national rules run out. Neither T.L.O. nor Safford involved a phone.

The Supreme Court’s main phone case, Riley v. California, decided 25 June 2014, held that police generally may not, without a warrant, search the digital information on a phone taken from someone who has been arrested. The Court said modern phones hold for many Americans “the privacies of life.” That case was about police after an arrest. It did not set a rule for school officials.

So whether a vice principal may scroll through messages after a fight depends on more than the federal cases. State law and the district’s written policy decide most of it, and they differ. I would not trust any page, including this one, that tells you the answer for your district without having read your district’s policy.

Taking a phone away for the rest of the day is a separate thing from reading what is on it. Many codes of conduct say something about both. Ask which one happened.

What did the Court leave open?

Three things, and each is worth asking about if it applies.

• Lockers and desks. A footnote in T.L.O. says the Court was not deciding whether a student has a legitimate expectation of privacy in “lockers, desks, or other school property provided for the storage of school supplies.”
• Police involvement. Another footnote says the case covered only searches by school authorities “acting alone and on their own authority,” and that the Court expressed “no opinion” on searches done “in conjunction with or at the behest of law enforcement agencies.”
• Private schools. The holding is about public school officials. A private school’s position starts with its own contract and handbook.

What should I ask the school?

Ask in writing, and ask for a written reply. These are questions about facts the school already has, so none of them should be treated as a challenge.

• What was searched: the bag, pockets, outer clothing, the phone, a locker.
• What the school suspected it would find, and what that suspicion was based on.
• Who asked for the search, who carried it out, and whether a school resource officer or other police officer was present or involved.
• If the phone was involved, whether anyone looked at its contents, and whether anything was copied or photographed.
• Whether anything was taken, where it is now, and how it comes back.
• The district policy on student searches and on phones, by name or number.

This page does not tell your teenager to refuse a search. What a refusal leads to is a district matter, and an office after a fight is the wrong place to find out.

What did this look like for one family?

Casimir is fifteen and was in a shoving match in the cafeteria. Afterwards the assistant principal asked for his phone, because another student said the two boys had been arguing over messages before lunch. Casimir unlocked it and handed it over.

His father’s first instinct was to call the school and say they had no right. Instead he sent one email with the questions above. The answers took two days. The assistant principal had looked at one message thread with the other student, nothing had been copied, and a resource officer had not been involved.

He then asked for the district’s phone policy and read it before deciding whether anything else needed saying. Most of what he had feared was not in the reply. The one thing he took forward was a question about how that message thread would be described in the discipline file.

This example is illustrative rather than a real family.

What this page cannot tell you

Your state’s law on school searches, your district’s policy, or whether a particular search was lawful. Those depend on facts and rules this site cannot see, and this site does not give legal advice.

If the search was part of a suspension, the first two days have their own order of operations in suspended for fighting. If the school used video of the fight, can I see the video of the fight covers your right to watch it. The full list of what to ask after a suspension is in questions to ask the school.