TRI In The News
Are We Sacrificing Privacy for Security?
From Fay Observer
Original article available here
In June, I criticized a female assistant principal in Sampson County who searched a 10-year-old boy, making him get down to his underwear.
The boy's parents weren't thrilled, either.
On Dec. 6, a nonprofit filed a lawsuit on behalf of Clarinda and Lionel Shawn Cox that named as a defendant the Sampson County school board. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
If you'll recall, the couple's son, Justin, had been accused of taking another student's money, which had fallen on the floor in the cafeteria. Justin denied it.
Assistant Principal Teresa Holmes, who is now retired, said in a written statement that she took the child to the office and, with a male staff member present, had Justin pull up his T-shirt to show his chest and take off his jeans. She ran her hand "around the outside of the waist band" of his boxers.
Justin's parents were not notified until afterward, which is one problem I had with the search. My other issue was having a female administrator search a young boy in such a personal way. It's hard to believe the school would have been so tolerant of a male teacher searching a girl in her underwear.
In June, Sampson County schools spokeswoman Susan Warren answered an email from me and said Holmes' actions had violated school policy, but noted that, at the time the story broke, Holmes had already retired.
To me, there is a larger issue at play than the policies of one school system, and the lawsuit, which was filed on the family's behalf by lawyers at the Rutherford Institute, gets right to it.
According to a news release, the institute alleges Justin's Fourth Amendment rights were violated. This is the one meant to prevent unreasonable search and seizure.
The institute president, John W. Whitehead, said in the release: "These types of searches clearly illustrate the danger inherent in giving school administrators carte blanche authority to violate the civil liberties and privacy rights of students."
While the Second Amendment has been strengthened in recent years by the U.S. Supreme Court, and First Amendment rights remain strong, the Fourth Amendment has not fared as well.
In an effort to fight the war on drugs, police departments and other institutions have repeatedly gone to court looking for ever more power to conduct searches of American citizens - and in most cases have been granted that power. Police consent searches, which roiled this community for some months, have been a part of this legal struggle, as well as searches of students on school property.
The Rutherford Institute, a Virginia-based nonprofit that focuses on civil liberties, is alleging that under case law, the school did not have the right to search Justin unless it believed he possessed contraband that posed a danger. The system has not publicly responded to the lawsuit.
Whatever the outcome, I hope it brings attention to these sorts of searches and the degree to which we're sacrificing privacy for security.
