The Colorado Supreme Court agreed on Monday that Denver Public Schools personnel acted constitutionally when they searched a student's backpack without a warrant or suspicion of wrongdoing, but instead pursuant to a "safety plan" created after his prior criminal conduct.
The case appeared to be the first to address how the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures applies to students when school officials' actions are based on an agreed-upon, but open-ended framework subjecting a student to searches.
Without saying how long a safety plan could remain in effect before it became unreasonable, Justice Melissa Hart concluded in the March 25 opinion that a safety plan in existence for one year gave reasonable grounds for administrators to search a student identified as J.G.
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