Colo. court upholds student searches
17-year-old in case took loaded gun to school
The Denver Post
DENVER — The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday broadly affirmed that school safety plans give officials the right to search students on campus without a warrant, finding that staff at a Denver high school acted lawfully when they searched a 10th grader who brought a loaded gun to school on his third day of classes in 2019.
School safety plans that require students be searched daily drew significant attention last year after a 17-yearold student subject to such a plan shot and wounded two administrators at Denver’s East High School during his daily search.
The state Supreme Court justices on Monday found that such searches are constitutional and that school officials do not need to obtain a warrant authorized by a judge before searching a student who is subject to a safety plan.
“A search of a student conducted on school grounds in accordance with an individualized, weapons-related safety plan is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,” Justice Melissa Hart wrote in the unanimous 21-page opinion.
School safety plans, which are common across the nation, aim to curb students’ problematic behavior. Some include daily searches for weapons, while others may be related to illicit drugs or fighting.
The student at the center of the Colorado Supreme Court case, identified only by his initials J.G. in court filings, was put under a school safety plan as a ninth grader at Denver’s John F. Kennedy High School in 2019 after he was found guilty in juvenile court of carrying a gun and menacing in an off-campus incident.
The 14-year-old was then subject to daily searches when he arrived at school for the rest of his ninth grade year, according to the opinion. But when he returned for the start of 10th grade in August 2019, school officials did not search him for the first two days of classes, according to the opinion.
On the third day, school officials stopped the teenager and searched his backpack and discovered he’d brought a loaded handgun to school. The student was then arrested and suspended from school.
In the subsequent criminal case, he argued that the search of his backpack was unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment, that the safety plan did not establish his consent to be searched, and that even if the safety plan did establish his consent, the plan was no longer active when the search occurred because of the lapse in enforcement at the start of the school year, according to the opinion.
The Colorado Supreme Court justices rejected those arguments Monday, finding that the search was constitutional because the safety plan was still in place. Students have a limited right to privacy while on school grounds and the 10th grader should have known he’d be subject to daily searches, the justices found.