Court Opinion

ID: 9660746
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 22:19:55.315502+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:21.726095
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. BABLITCH, J.
(concurring). I join the mandate in this case, and I agree with the majority's conclusion that Isiah B. had no Fourth Amendment privacy interests in his school locker. However, I reach that conclusion based on a different rationale than that expressed by the majority. The majority concludes that because the school has a written policy retaining ownership and possessory control of school lockers and gives notice of that policy, student's have no reasonable expectation of privacy in *661those lockers. Isiah B. v. State, majority op. at 648-649. I do not agree that the school policy plays such a pivotal role in this case. I conclude that a student cannot claim a Fourth Amendment privacy interest in his or her school locker because that expectation is not an expectation that society will recognize as reasonable at this time. Thus, the school policy in this case does not negate an otherwise legally cognizable privacy interest, but rather merely informs students of the already existing legal fact; students do not have privacy interests in their school lockers.
t — I
The "capacity to claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment depends ... upon whether the person who claims the protection of the Amendment has a legitimate expectation of privacy in the invaded place." Rakas v. Illinois, 439 U.S. 128, 143 (1978). A subjective expectation of privacy is legitimate if it is one that society is prepared to recognize as "reasonable." New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 339 (1985).
In T.L.O., the United States Supreme Court concluded that a student's privacy interest in a purse is an interest which society is willing to accept as reasonable. However, the court noted that it was not addressing the Fourth Amendment question with respect to school lockers. Furthermore, the Court intimated the potential for changing views concerning the interests in the school setting which society will recognize as reasonable. In particular, the Court emphasized the difficulty of maintaining discipline in public schools and analogized the school setting with that of prisons; a place where the Court has concluded that the need to maintain order mandates that prisoners retain no legitimate privacy interests in their cells. *662The Court concluded, however, that it was not "yet ready to hold that the schools and the prisons need be equated for purposes of the Fourth Amendment." T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 339 (emphasis added).
Although I do not think that public schools and prisons necessarily need be equated and thereby strip students of all privacy interests, I do think that the problems in public schools that have been on the rise since the T.L.O. decision, particularly the real and pervasive safety problems, warrant a conclusion that society is not willing, at this time, to recognize students' privacy interests in school lockers as reasonable.
The problems in our public schools have turned deadly, and students, teachers and administrators have real and justifiable fears concerning their schools. William Celis 3d, School Crime Hits Suburbs and Small Towns, N.Y. Times, April 21, 1993, at Al, B8. "School children are inflicting violent harms upon each other at an alarming rate.” Donald L. Beci, School Violence: Protecting Our Children and the Fourth Amendment, 41 Cath. U.L. Rev. 817, 820 (1992) (citing Lisa D. Bastian & Bruce M. Taylor, U.S. Dep't of Justice, School Crime: A National Crime Victimization Survey Report (NCJ-131645) (1991)) (footnote omitted). According to a recent study conducted by the Center for Disease Control, one in five American high school students — and almost one in three boys — carries a gun, knife, or other weapon with the intent to use it if necessary. Glenn Ruffenach, At High Schools One in Five Students Carries a Weapon, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 11, 1991, at Section A, Page 5C column 2. In a recent national survey of school crime conducted over a six-month period, approximately one-half million American children reported experiencing one or more violent crimes while at school. Beci, supra, at 820 (cita*663tions omitted). "Twenty-two percent of all children feared an attack at school, and almost one-half million of them reported taking a weapon to school to protect themselves. Id. (footnote omitted).
One need only pick up a newspaper or magazine to realize that the situation in public schools continues to worsen. See, e.g., The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, April 13, 1993, Section A, Page 8, Guns at School: A New Reality, Weapons; Schools; Policy; Law; Reform; Henry Chu, Officials Try To Ease Parents', Students' Fears After Shooting; Violence: A Crowd at Reseda High is Assured that Steps to Increase Security are Being Taken. But Many Worried Adults Still Have Questions, Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1993, Friday, Valley Edition, Metro; Part B; Page 3; Column 5; Marie Koklanaris, 'Blackboard Jungle' with More Firepower; Educators Seek Solutions to Violence, The Washington Times, February 22, 1993, Monday, Final Edition, Part A; Pg. 1A; Charlie Weaver, When Kids Pack a Gun Instead of Lunch, Star Tribune, February 10,1993 Metro Edition, News; Pg. 17A; Jordana Hart, Schools Finding More Weapons; Steps Taken to Counter Aggression by Students, The Boston Globe, May 10 1992, Sunday, City Edition, South Weekly; Pg. 1. Last year, researchers at Xavier University in Cincinnati interviewed administrators in 1,261 school systems finding that:
Fifty-four percent of the 294 suburban school officials said violence in their schools had got worse in the past four years; 43 percent of the 344 small-town officials said violence was up, and 34 percent of the 413 rural officials said the same. (By comparison, 64 percent of the 210 urban school administrators said the problem was getting worse.)...
*664And with the proliferation of gangs, guns and knives, behavior that was once merely nasty has turned life-threatening. Celis, supra, at B8.
As these facts and the facts of this case exemplify, school administrators are desperately trying to protect the interests of all of their students from the growing problems in schools by trying to maintain safety without disrupting the learning environment of the school. With such immense problems occurring in the schools, with weapons of all kinds present daily, society is unwilling to view a student's alleged privacy interest in a locker as reasonable. Students should expect, and I would guess many often do expect and maybe even embrace, the fact that subjective expectations of privacy in their school lockers will not be viewed as reasonable by society, and that school officials may have to search lockers to ensure the safety of all of the students, staff, and other personnel at the school. Schools often have ready access to lockers either by a master key or lists of combinations. In some schools, administrators have attempted to resolve the problem by simply removing the school lockers, which are the school's property to remove. Laurel Walters, School Violence Enters Suburbs, The Christian Science Monitor, National Section, p. 6, April 19, 1993. Schools can search lockers without interfering with a student's person, thus avoiding interference with students' time in class. Furthermore, other than the person, the locker is the most likely place for storage of guns and other dangerous items. In light of the dangerous times and pervasiveness of weapons in the schools, students simply cannot reasonably expect that lockers, which the schools provide and maintain access to, will not be subject to search.
*665II.
The majority concludes that Isiah B. has no constitutional expectation of privacy in his school locker because the school notifies students that lockers are subject to searches. Saying that a privacy interest is negated because students and parents were notified that lockers are Milwaukee Public School property and subject to inspection when necessary and appropriate reflects a very erroneous and very dangerous view of the Fourth Amendment. Negating a constitutional "expectation" of privacy based upon whether or not a person was notified of the impending search sets a dangerous precedent for intrusions upon Fourth Amendment rights.
According to the majority opinion, Madison High School's policy which notifies students that lockers are the property of the school, and that lockers can be inspected by the school at any time, negates any privacy interest a student might have had. I do not agree with this analysis because it does not rationally reflect the purposes of the Fourth Amendment. What the majority is saying is that the simple fact of informing someone that he or she might be searched ipso facto acts to negate that person's Fourth Amendment rights. That is an untenable constitutional principle. If the Madison police chief warns all Madison citizens that all cars found in the Dane County ramp on a certain date will be searched, that warning should in no way negate the constitutional privacy interests of the people who park their cars in the ramp on that date. Warning them in advance that their cars will be searched unquestionably reduces their "expectations" of privacy in a literal sense, but certainly does not negate their "right" of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.
*666The majority falls prey to what I perceive to be an increasing misunderstanding of the constitutional term "expectation of privacy." The majority errs by interpreting the word "expectation" literally. It has always been used in a constitutional sense to indicate reasonable privacy interests. Unfortunately, the majority's literal interpretation now says, in essence, that if you have been warned of an impending search, your privacy interests under the Fourth Amendment are negated because your expectations of privacy have been negated.
Perhaps the lesson here is that all courts should begin to look at these cases in terms of privacy "interests" rather than expectations. As I stated in my dissent in State v. Rewolinski, 159 Wis. 2d 1, 50-51, 464 N.W.2d 401 (citation omitted):
When considering what is a 'reasonable expectation of privacy,' courts should focus on privacy interests rather than on privacy expectations in order to rationally reflect the purposes of the fourth amendment.
Focusing on expectations leaves open the opportunity for the 'government by edict or by known systematic practice to condition the expectations of the populace in such a way that no one would have any real hope of privacy.'
A person's legitimate expectation of privacy cannot be deprived merely by notifying him or her that the expectation will not be honored. See Jones v. Latexo Independent School Dist., 499 F. Supp. 223, 234 (1980) ("the mere announcement by officials that individual rights are about to be infringed upon cannot justify the subsequent infringement. . . . through the medium of comparison, if the Government announced that all tele*667phone lines would henceforth be tapped, it is apparent that, nevertheless, the public would not lose its expectation of privacy in using the telephone."). Such a result, as one commentator succinctly explains, would render the Fourth Amendment for all practical purposes a nullity:
Plainly, fourth amendment rights would be rendered meaningless if they were subject to serious qualification or elimination by the terms of regulations issued by those interested in making or facilitating a search. In fact, it seems safe to assume that the existence of a regulation is seriously treated as relevant at all only because the fourth amendment protects a 'reasonable expectation of privacy.' The false turn that seems to be signaled by this test can be uncovered by a simple hypothetical illustration. Suppose a police chief issues a 'regulation' — clearly written and widely circulated — stating that all houses in a particular area will be searched if the police chief finds it desirable to do so. It hardly seems likely that the courts would uphold the search, even though, if the chief is credible, the owner of the searched house may well not have had a reasonable expectation of privacy from that search. William G. Buss, The Fourth Amendment and Searches of Students in Public Schools, 59 Iowa L. Rev. 739, 763 (1974).
It seems so fundamental as to need no explanation that the "fourth amendment's protections cannot be defined in terms of merely factual expectations but must be shaped by the privacy that an individual ought to be entitled to expect." Id. The mere existence of a policy which indicates that the State may conduct a search does not necessarily negate nor lessen an individual's legitimate privacy interest.
*668In conclusion, I concur with the mandate but would hold that students have no privacy interests in their school lockers regardless of the presence or absence of a school policy which notifies student's of this fact.