Opinion ID: 171080
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Justified At Its Inception

Text: First, the district court found that one of the seizures was not justified at its inception because M.C. was placed in the timeout room for not following directions to begin work on his phonics assignment. Dist. Ct. Op. at 19-20. The district court characterized this as a question of fact whether defendants' placement of [M.C.] in the timeout room for failing to follow directions was justified at its inception. Id. at 20. We think this was a misunderstanding. While the nature of the underlying eventswhat happenedis a factual issue not reviewable by this Court, determining whether a timeout was justified at its inception is a question of law. There is some factual dispute over the factual basis for the timeout: whether M.C.'s refusal to follow was the sole cause of the seizure that day. We resolve that dispute, as did the district court, in favor of the plaintiff. Nonetheless, the seizure was still justified at its inception. The Fourth Amendment does not hold that ensuring the safety of the class is the sole permissible reason for sending students to time out. M.C.'s own IEP suggests that timeouts may be useful as a technique to obtain cooperation and participation and to teach M.C. to do what is asked of him. App. 466. If corporal punishment is a constitutionally acceptable form of discipline for a student's defiance, it is implausible that timeouts are not. See Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 97 S.Ct. 1401, 51 L.Ed.2d 711 (1977). When M.C. refused to do his school work, it was not unreasonable for the teachers to send him to a five-minute timeout in the hope of obtaining his cooperation in the future.