Word: choplick
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Dates: during 1985-1985
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...Theodore Choplick, assistant vice principal at Piscataway High School in New Jersey, thought he was doing a reasonable thing. He opened the purse of a 14- year-old girl who had been caught breaking school rules by smoking in the lavatory. The girl denied she had been smoking in the lavatory or that she ever smoked. Choplick figured that the contents of her purse would show whether she was lying. They did. The purse contained cigarettes, marijuana and some notes suggesting that she was selling pot to other students. Choplick called the police...
Last week, after three lower court proceedings and nearly five years, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that Choplick had indeed been "reasonable." In so doing, the court held in law what many principals and teachers have held in practice: public school is a special place wherein the usual guarantees and restrictions of the Fourth Amendment regarding search and seizure of an individual or his property do not necessarily apply. The amendment specifies that a search may not be "unreasonable," and it indicates that authorities can obtain a search warrant only for "probable cause" that something illegal will...
...stricter standard of probable cause; a few other states have cast school officials in loco parentis (in the place of a parent), able to search pretty much at will. But most lower courts have presaged the Supreme Court ruling for reasonable grounds, allowing the kind of search Choplick made...
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