In a devastating ruling that does away with what little Fourth Amendment protections remain to public school students and their families, the U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out a lower court ruling in Alford, et al. v. Greene which required authorities to secure a warrant, a court order or parental consent before interrogating students at school.

In reviewing the case, the Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a state human services caseworker and armed deputy sheriff in Oregon violated the rights of a 9-year-old girl when, without a court order or parental consent, they removed her from her elementary school classroom and questioned her for two hours about allegations of parental abuse.

Pointing to the fact that the girl involved is nearing her 18th birthday and no longer lives in Oregon, the Court not only declared the case moot but vacated the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that the girls’ Fourth Amendment rights against an “unreasonable search and seizure” were violated.

The Rutherford Institute had filed a friend of the court brief in the case urging the Court to affirm the lower court’s ruling and reject the idea that individual rights are forfeited when parents send their children to public schools, essentially rendering them wards of the state.

The Rutherford Institute’s amicus brief in Alford, et al. v. Greene is available at here. [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]

“It’s disturbing when the highest court in America will not affirmatively decide that children have basic constitutional rights in our schools and that parents do not forfeit their rights when they send their children to public school,” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. “Our nation’s schools are increasingly being transformed into police states where children are subject to indignities, such as mass, suspicionless searches, and parental rights are largely ignored.”

In February 2003, a uniformed county sheriff and an Oregon Department of Human Services investigator directed school officials at an elementary school to summon S.G., a 9-year-old girl, for questioning. S.G. was then removed from her class, taken to an empty conference room, and left alone with the sheriff (who had a firearm visible) and the investigator, who proceeded to interrogate her for two hours. No court order had been obtained authorizing the seizure and questioning of S.G., nor had the government agents contacted S.G.’s mother to seek her permission to question the young girl.

Nevertheless, the government agents questioned S.G. about allegations they had received that S.G.’s father had sexually abused her (charges were later dismissed). The encounter reportedly so scared S.G. that she was physically sick that night and could not eat.

S.G.’s mother subsequently sued the investigator and sheriff, alleging that they had violated S.G.’s Fourth Amendment rights to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. In 2009, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the government agents violated S.G.’s constitutional rights. The court also declared that the agents’ actions at the school constituted an unauthorized seizure of S.G., which is not exempt from the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

In its appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Obama Administration argued that S.G.’s mere presence at school was sufficient to justify law enforcement officers seizing and interrogating her without her mother’s knowledge or consent—a position with which The Rutherford Institute heartily disagreed, insisting that it would further undermine the rights of parents of public school students.

This Article first appeared at the Rutherford Institute website and is used with permission.