Legal Question in Education Law in California

As part of a senior prank, two friends and I were on school grounds late at night and climbed onto the school roof using a ladder. We did not break into the school but were merely leaving a couch on the roof. I did not realize it at the time, but one of my friends had a radar/laser jammer in his back pack (they are illegal in the state of California). The police were somehow alerted to our presence and showed up. They saw the ladder and I explained to them what we were doing. Five minutes later, our school principals, who were nearby in a school board meeting, also arrived. One of the officers asked to see my friend�s bag. He responded, �Do I have to give it to you? Do you have probable cause?� The officer shook his head but then our principal told him �I am a school administrator, I can search whatever I want�. He then found the jammer. My question is this: I have learned in school that faculty can legally perform warrantless searches on students with reasonable suspicion (which he had) during school and at school events. However, can administrators also perform searches after school hours while students are on school property and if so can this evidence be used to cite him or is it �fruit from a forbidden tree�? After he found the detector, he searched his car, which was parked in the street in front of the school. Can administrators perform warrantless automobile searches if a car is not even on school property?


Asked on 6/09/11, 10:01 am

2 Answers from Attorneys
Andrew Harrell W. Andrew Harrell, Attorney at Law

Assuming that you or your friends are charged with a criminal offense, the issue is whether the administrator was an agent of the police, making it an improper search since the officer admitted "no probable cause," or whether the administrator was authorized on his own, even after hours, to make a search and turn it over to the police. I would lean toward the latter: I think a court would view the administrator's search of the backpack as legal since he may have suspected a theft. On the other hand, I am not sure that the search of the car by the administrator was legal since it wasn't on school property and the search of the back pack didn't reveal any school property. Incidentally, I believe that the police officer had probable cause to make a search and an arrest, despite what he said since you were trespassing.

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Answered on 6/09/11, 10:12 am

Hmmmmmm. Principal at a school board meeting nearby to the high school in 94611 . . . you guys must be Hairys. So considering that at least one adult out of every six in Piedmont is a lawyer, statistically one of your parents should be able to answer the question.

Seriously though the authority of school administrators to conduct warrantless searches of students and their belongings is not confined to school hours (they are free to open lockers after hours, for example), and may under certain circumstances extend off school grounds. So the back-pack search was most very likely entirely legal. Since the backpack search was legal, and disclosed contraband material related to automobile operations, I would say that the police and the administrator both then had probable cause to search the car. That's not a slam dunk, and if you were my client I'd have to research it to be sure, but I'm fairly confident that both searches were legal.

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Answered on 6/09/11, 1:30 pm


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