Safford Unified School District v Redding
How was the student in this case searched?
She was strip searched by a nurse in the bathroom
What policy did the student violate in this case?
The school's no phone policy by texting in class
What kind of pills was the student passing out?
Simple pain killers like Aleve
Do students have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the content contained in their phones?
Yes!
Why does the students age matter in this case?
The younger a student is, the more likely it is that a search could be excessively intrusive
Why did the Assistant principal read thru the students text messages in this case?
To make sure the student wasn't planning to hurt himself or others and to see if there was an issue the principal could help the student work thru
Why did the search in this case exceed the permissible scope and violate the 4th Amendment?
When searching students, the search cannot be excessively intrusive. Here, the school did not have any specific reason to think Redding was hiding pills in intimate places and the pills were not very dangerous. They were basically like Aleve or Tylenol. So the search was excessively intrusive
What is required for school administrators to examine a phone's content like someone's texts
They must explain a specific factual basis for examining the phone content (for example, in this case if the someone said "the student is texting me telling me he's going to beat me up and rob me," to the school administrator, that would be a strong specific factual basis)
Why does the fact that there was no indication of danger to the students from the power of the pills or their quantity important?
It made the search less reasonable.
Why did the assistant principal lack reasonable suspicion to search in this case? (hint: reasonable suspicion means that he had a specific, real facts that would lead someone to reasonably believe that a crime or school policy was violated)
Using a cell phone in class would not lead someone to reasonably any further school policies are being violated or that a further search would reveal evidence of criminal activity