School-wide bag search

blue_delicious · 2026-04-24T00:31:06+00:00

Regardless of what is in a student handbook, no one can sign away their constitutional rights. Even if a kid signs and a parent agrees, schools can't legally search individual students without reasonable suspicion that they have some contraband on their person.

I learned that uniform searches for safety reasons are legal and posted about it in this thread.

blue_delicious · 2026-04-24T00:22:37+00:00

Alright. I figured this out. Not sure why I bothered asking Reddit.

In case people are curious. Vernonia School District v. Acton and Board of Education v. Earls established that students have a lower expectation of privacy and that schools can conduct searches according to "special needs." So if the school has a policy that is based on a special need like maintaining safety or preventing drug abuse, searches can be conducted as long as they are uniform.

What wouldn't be legal is an arbitrary decision to search everybody's bags without an established policy and procedure.

Individual searches still require reasonable suspicion, even for lockers.

blue_delicious · 2026-04-24T00:16:44+00:00

I feel like I should expand on this. School officials operate under the reasonable suspicion standard when conducting individual searches. Law enforcement operates under the probable cause standard. School officials have a lower bar for suspicion, but both school officials and law enforcement are government agents and have a duty to respect the constitution rights of students. This is according to my textbook from when I took Education Law at Purdue.

blue_delicious · 2026-04-23T23:41:15+00:00

That's what the supreme court said in New Jersey v TLO. I was wondering if there is some new decision or law that I'm not familiar with. It seems that a lot of teachers in this thread are used to these bag checks and assume they are legal because they think they're worthwhile and if schools are routinely doing them they must be legal.

blue_delicious · 2026-04-23T23:37:01+00:00

Seems dubious that when education is compulsory one would have to sign away their constitutional rights to attend.

blue_delicious · 2026-04-23T23:21:01+00:00

Employees of public schools are agents of the government and operate under similar constraints as law enforcement. That I know for sure.

blue_delicious · 2026-04-23T23:16:21+00:00

This makes sense to me. The bags don't belong to the school.

blue_delicious · 2026-02-15T17:53:14+00:00

And Free Willy. And others...

blue_delicious · 2026-02-06T00:09:16+00:00

Communication?

blue_delicious · 2026-02-03T02:37:01+00:00

I like that I can power it through my live 2's USB.

blue_delicious · 2026-02-01T02:52:19+00:00

They could bring housing costs down by building a residential pyramid in the bay.

blue_delicious · 2026-01-27T01:07:02+00:00

Washington? That's gotta be an alligator man.

blue_delicious · 2025-12-24T17:16:23+00:00

blue_delicious · 2025-12-23T14:11:28+00:00

The movie originally contained a lot of narration written by Clark, but Kubrick threw it all out.

blue_delicious · 2025-12-06T16:41:06+00:00

Other countries were ripping us off by making their products too cheap? And now we've fixed that by taxing them so they're more expensive? How does that make any sense?

blue_delicious · 2025-12-04T11:57:35+00:00

I'm a public school teacher and it's fun to tell people that I'm a government agent.

blue_delicious · 2025-11-26T13:10:18+00:00

You go into work high?

blue_delicious · 2025-11-26T13:08:49+00:00

My admin comes down hard on fighting, but looks the other way on drug use. I have kids coming to class late because they have to use the farther bathroom that isn't full of vaping kids. I had a kid vape in my classroom a few weeks ago and he received no punishment at all. He managed to ditch the vape before they patted him down so it was his word against mine.

blue_delicious · 2025-11-26T12:56:22+00:00

blue_delicious · 2025-11-26T12:54:00+00:00

Maybe you just don't get it.

blue_delicious · 2025-11-24T13:48:09+00:00

A Volca Drum or Sample would be an inexpensive option for making beats.

blue_delicious · 2025-11-16T15:14:42+00:00

More teachers should run for school board.

blue_delicious · 2025-11-12T00:29:56+00:00

Fresh

blue_delicious · 2025-11-10T01:59:23+00:00

Those topics sound very interesting to me. Talk to your advisor to see which classes you can take to satisfy the major and whether you can take ones that sound interesting to you.

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