Post details: Colorado school searching students' cellphones for text messages
10/11/07
Colorado school searching students' cellphones for text messages
The ACLU of Colorado has threatened to sue a Colorado school district for its practice of searching student cellphone text messages, according to its press release issued yesterday:
According to the ACLU’s letter [to the school district], the searching and transcribing of students’ text messages violates a Colorado statute that was enacted to protect the privacy of telephone and electronic communications. That statute makes it a felony to read, copy, or record a telephone or electronic communication without the consent of the sender or receiver. The letter also explains that searches of cell phones at Monarch High School also violate state and federal constitutional provisions that forbid unreasonable searches and seizures.
The ACLU said it learned of the actions of Monarch administrators in interviews with numerous parents and students who complained about a series of cell phone searches at the end of the last school year. According to the letter, the searches began when a student accused of smoking cigarettes was sent to an administrator’s office. After a search of the student’s pockets and backpack turned up nothing, the administrator searched the student’s cell phone. He then interrogated the student about text messages the administrator characterized as “incriminating.” With names of other students obtained from the student’s text messages, administrators called in additional students, questioned them, and also searched their cell phones. With names obtained in this second wave of questioning administrators then called in a third round of students and questioned them. Transcripts of cell phone messages were placed in the disciplinary files of multiple students, the letter says.
Hat tip to Taylor Pendergrass, Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado for providing this.
How the school district can square this with T.L.O. and federal law escapes me. But, school districts often think of themselves and the law unto themselves. At least everytime I have tangled with them they've been that way. (We sued the Little Rock School District for telling students to empty their pockets and leave a room, and they would search everything, including backpacks. We won. Doe v. Little Rock School District, 380 F.3d 349 (8th Cir. 2004).)
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