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New Jersey Vs Tlo Case Study

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Legal Research According to New Jersey v. T.L.O Supreme Court Case (1999), a teacher at Piscataway High School in Middlesex County, New Jersey discovered two 14-year-old freshmen smoking in a lavatory on March 7, 1980. Since smoking in the lavatory was a violation of a school rule, the teacher took the two girls to the Principal’s office, where they met with Theodore Choplick, the Assistant Vice Principal. During questioning, one girl admitted that has had violated the school rule, while the other girl, T.L.O, denied she smoked at all, much less that she had been smoking in the lavatory. Becoming suspicious, Mr. Choplick asked T.L.O to come into his office and to see her purse. Upon opening the purse, Mr. Choplick found a pack of cigarettes. When he went to grab for the cigarettes he noticed a package of cigarette rolling papers. Suspecting evidence of drug use could be found in the purse, Mr. Choplick proceeded to look through the purse. The searched discovered a small amount of marijuana, a pipe, a number of empty …show more content…

T.L.O, (1999), the cases of Terry v. Ohio, Hudson v. Palmer, and Rawlings v. Kentucky examined that a search of a person is an invasion of privacy especially when searches are conduced on closed items. However, the Fourth Amendment commands that searches and seizures be reasonable, and what is reasonable depends on the situation in which the search takes place. Regardless of the child’s privacy, it is the administrators and teachers jobs to maintain discipline within schools. Several cases such as, Terry v. Ohio, United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, Delaware v. Prouse, United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, and Camara v. Municipal Court, that recognized the legality of searches and seizures based on reasonable suspicion and not probable cause. Therefore, the Court decided that the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness of the search and “justified at its inception” (“New Jersey v. T.L.O,”

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