AELE LAW LIBRARY OF CASE SUMMARIES:
Civil Liability
of Law Enforcement Agencies & Personnel


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Search and Seizure: School Premises

    A 7-year-old grade school student sued a public school police officer and the school principal for violating his Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment rights. He was handcuffed at the school following an outburst from him against a classmate who had been persistently teasing him. A federal appeals court concluded that neither the officer nor the principal had violated the student’s rights, and they were both entitled to qualified immunity on excessive force and unreasonable seizure claims. Under the circumstances, a reasonable officer could believe, based on the boy’s recent resistance, that keeping him in handcuffs for 15 minutes until a parent arrived was the reasonable thing to do. The officer could have also believed that his actions were needed to prevent the student from attempting to leave or pose a risk of harm to himself. Additionally, the principal’s failure to intervene and have the officer remove the handcuffs was reasonable because of her previous experience with the student. She had previously found it necessary to restrain him several months before. Even if the reasonableness of the officer and the principal’s actions were questionable, the student could not show that a reasonable official would have been on notice that their conduct violated a clearly established right. Because there was no violation of the student’s constitutional rights, the municipal liability claims also failed.  K.W.P. v. Kansas City Public Schools, #17-3602, 2019 U.S. App. Lexis 23023, 2019 WL 3489104 (8th Cir.).

     An assistant principal ordered a mass, suspicionless strip search of twenty-two female students in the sixth grade choir after $50 went missing. The searches were carried out by the school nurse.  A federal appeals court ruled that the complaint alleged a claim for municipal liability where the students were searched in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights. The plaintiffs adequately alleged an official municipal policy on which section 1983 liability may rest where the school district failed to train its employees about their legal duties not to conduct unreasonable searches.  Littell v. Houston Independent School District, #16-20717, 2018 U.S. App. Lexis 17659 (5th Cir.).

     In a case involving alleged "sexting" by a 17-year-old high school student (transmitting semi-nude photos of herself over a cellphone), a lawsuit against a school district on behalf of the student has been settled for a total of $33,000 to be paid to the girl and her attorneys with no admission of fault by the school district. The lawsuit contended that the school unlawfully searched the student's cellphone, punished her for storing semi-nude photos of herself on it, and subsequently referred her case to the local district attorney's office for possible criminal prosecution under child pornography laws. Fourth and First Amendment claims were asserted as well as common law privacy claims. The phone was initially seized because the student used it in the bathroom in violation of school rules, and the principal then searched the phone's stored messages, and discovered the photos, some of which showed the girl's naked breasts and one of which showed her fully naked. The photos were intended to be seen by only the student and her long-time boyfriend, and were not circulated to other students at the school. Claims in the lawsuit against the prosecutor's office, individual prosecutors, and a police detective are still pending and were not settled. N.N. v. Tunkhannock Area School District, #3:02-at-06999, (M.D. Pa. 2010). Various documents about the case and the settlement can be found on a website.
     Two parents sued a school district and various individual defendants, claiming that a visitor management policy implemented at a school violated their rights against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as rights of due process, privacy, and free speech. The policy, adopted after a sex offender gained access to a school in the district, and exposed himself to a child, required every visitor to district schools to show a state-issued photo ID card or be denied access to secure areas of the school where children might be present. The mother had been denied access to an area of her child's school because she refused to allow the school to either scan her driver's license or enter the information from it manually. Rejecting the parents' claims, a federal appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs had failed to show that they had a fundamental right to access the school's secure areas. The defendants were granted summary judgment and awarded costs. Meadows v. Lake Travis Independent School District, #09-50850, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 18802 (Unpub. 5th Cir.).
     A student was subjected to a ten-day suspension from school after he wrote a slogan on the back of his hands supporting a former student who was accused of shooting a police officer. The student sued, seeking a judicial declaration that the school's actions violated his First Amendment rights, and the expungement of his suspension, as well as damages and attorneys' fees. A federal court rejected this claim. Even if the student acted in a peaceful and passive manner in displaying the slogan, his actions took place within a context of hostility and intimidation. School authorities could reasonably believe that his actions might contribute to disturbances already going on because of gang activity and the same slogan, even if no individual had felt threatened by his actions. Allowing the student to display the slogan might have increased the fear and tension already expressed by some students and parents over the slogan, so the school could properly prohibit its display. Brown v. Cabell County Board of Education, #3:09-0279, 2010 U.S. Dist. Lexis 53200 (S.D.W.Va.).
     In a case allegedly involving "sexting" by underage girls, the sending of nude or provocative sexually oriented photographs of oneself to others via cell phones or the Internet, a federal appeals court enjoined the prosecution of the plaintiffs, based on a claim that the threatened prosecution on felony child pornography charges was in unlawful retaliation for the plaintiffs' exercise of their First Amendment rights in refusing to attend an educational meeting on the subject in order to avoid prosecution. In at least one instance, a parent argued that the photograph sent by her daughter was not child pornography, since it involved no nudity, while a prosecutor took the position that it was child pornography because it was posed in a provocative manner. Coercing attendance to such educational meetings by threats of prosecution, the court stated, could violate parents' rights to parental autonomy under the Fourteenth Amendment (including deciding what lessons concerning morality and gender roles to give their children), and their children's First Amendment rights against compelled speech. Miller v. Mitchell, #09-2144, 2010 U.S. App. Lexis 5501 (3rd Cir.).

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