DENVER — The Colorado Supreme Court considered this week what constitutional safeguards are necessary when school officials place students on "safety plans" that call for routine searches, even when there is no reasonable suspicion of an offense.
The case may be the first in the country scrutinizing student safety plans, and balancing the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches with the reduced expectations of privacy the U.S. Supreme Court has said schoolchildren have.
Although the parties and outside organizations argued to Colorado's justices about the need to ensure school safety in an era of frequent mass shootings, the only major area of disagreement during oral arguments on Wednesday revolved around a narrow question: Did Denver Public Schools put a student on notice that he was subject to searches under his safety plan?
"Everybody agrees notice is required," said public defender Mark Evans. "The whole reason we send kids to school is to learn to be good citizens. And if we want the citizenry that respects and defends the constitutional rights of others, we have to respect and defend the constitutional rights of our schoolchildren."
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