Opinion ID: 853224
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Extent of Control Over Students

Text: The majority contends that the Linkes' privacy interests deserve lesser protection than Article I, Section 11 would normally demand because schools are allowed a degree of supervision and control that could not be exercised over free adults. I agree that Indiana law generally supports that view. However, a school's degree of supervision is not without its limits. The majority relies on the notion that schools stand in the relation of parents and guardians to its students in matters of conduct and discipline. This may justify the imposition of drug testing when matters of conduct and discipline are at issue. But it does not carry equal weight when suspicionless searches are conducted as a matter of routine. Indeed, in T.L.O., the United States Supreme Court cautioned against such a laissez-faire view of the role of school officials who conduct searches: If school authorities are state actors for purposes of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and due process, it is difficult to understand why they should be deemed to be exercising parental rather than public authority when conducting searches of their students. More generally, the Court has recognized that the concept of parental delegation as a source of school authority is not entirely consonant with compulsory education laws. Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 662 [97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711] (1977). Today's public school officials do not merely exercise authority voluntarily conferred on them by individual parents; rather, they act in furtherance of publicly mandated educational and disciplinary policies.... In carrying out searches and other disciplinary functions pursuant to such policies, school officials act as representatives of the State, not merely as surrogates for the parents.... 469 U.S. at 336, 105 S.Ct. 733. It is also noteworthy that, although the education of Indiana's students is one of the most highly regulated enterprises of our state government, nowhere in the specifically enumerated powers and duties of this state's school corporations has the legislature given explicit authority for random drug testing of students. [3]