Ohio School Law: Searches / Surveillance of Students

School officials need not obtain a warrant before conducting a search, nor must they have "probable cause." However, the search must be reasonable.

A school district does not violate the 4th Amendment when it requires drug tests to participate in extracurricular activities.

Because the suspected facts did not indicate the drugs presented a danger to students or were specifically concealed in the student's underwear, the principal did not have sufficient suspicion to warrant extending the search to the student's underwear.

The Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures applies to searches conducted by public school officials. What this prohibition means in a school context, though, is far from settled.

A search of an unattended backpack left on a school bus was reasonable under the TLO standard.

F. Lee Francis, Southern University Law Review, Vol. 49, 2021

Tonja Jacobi & Riley Clafton, 13 UC IRVINE LAW REVIEW 1643 (2022)

ABC Six on your side, 8/2/22

ABC News 12/31/22

Pulitizer Center 9/20/22 K-12 schools also use this product called Social Sentinel.

Videotaping of middle school students while they changed their clothes in school locker rooms was an unreasonable search, and students' Fourth Amendment right not to be videotaped by school officials while they changed their clothes in school locker rooms was clearly established.

A school official's general background knowledge of a student's drug abuse or depressive tendencies, without more, does not enable a school official to search a student's cell phone when a search would otherwise be unwarranted.