Court Opinion

ID: 9851288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:09:57.324138+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:53.055481
License: Public Domain

MOSK, J.
I dissent.
I do not quarrel with the “reasonable suspicion” test adopted by the majority, but I cannot subscribe to their grounds for that holding or their disposition of this appeal. As will appear, I would rely instead on an interpretation of the duties imposed by statute on school officials, and I would find there clearly was reasonable suspicion on this record. Thus there is no need to reverse and remand the matter to the juvenile court.
My colleagues rely on two bases for their conclusion. First, they equate school officials with peace officers; second, they overrule a controlling Court of Appeal decision because it relies on the doctrine of in loco parentis. I believe they err on both points.
The majority stress that “public school officials are governmental agents” by the very nature of their employment. (Ante, p. 560.) True. Of course public school officials work for the government. But so do the secretary who types this opinion, the librarian who catalogues our law books, the gardener who tends the courthouse lawn, the janitor who cleans the building in which this court sits, and, in California, more than 200,000 other state employees. The test is not whether a person gets a paycheck from a gov*571ernment agency; the test is whether that person is an agent of law enforcement and subject to the restraints imposed on peace officers.
It is untenable to deem the hundreds of thousands of federal, state, and local government employees to be agents of law enforcement. One becomes a law enforcement agent only when directly assigned to so act by authorized personnel, or when one volunteers to serve. In the absence of such an assignment by direction or by choice, school teachers and officials have no obligation to adhere to the rules governing law enforcement or to protect criminal defendants.
The majority reject the well-reasoned opinion in In re Donaldson (1969) 269 Cal.App.2d 509 [75 Cal.Rptr. 220], and its progeny (e.g., In re Guillermo M. (1982) 130 Cal.App.3d 642 [181 Cal.Rptr. 856] (hg. den.); In re Christopher W. (1973) 29 Cal.App.3d 777 [105 Cal.Rptr. 775]; In re Fred C. (1972) 26 Cal.App.3d 320 [102 Cal.Rptr. 682]; In re Thomas G. (1970) 11 Cal.App.3d 1193 [90 Cal.Rptr. 361]) because of reliance on the doctrine of in loco parentis, which, they suggest, “ignores the realities of modern public school education.” In fact, their quarrel is not with those who fail to recognize such “realities,” but with the Legislature of the State of California.
Regardless of how it fares elsewhere, the basic doctrine of in loco parentis is not dead in California. (Accounts of its demise in Gordon J. v. Santa Ana Unified School Dist. (1984) 162 Cal.App.3d 530 [208 Cal.Rptr. 657], are, as Mark Twain would have put it, grossly exaggerated.) The concept is alive and well, and is codified by the Legislature in Education Code section 44807. In loco parentis means, precisely, “in the place of a parent” (Black’s Law Dict. (4th ed. 1951) p. 896); it originated in the text of Blackstone’s Commentaries.
Section 44807 provides that teachers, vice principals, and other certificated employees of a school district may exercise “the same degree of physical control over a pupil that a parent would be legally privileged to exercise . . . .” (Italics added.) In other words, the enumerated employees of a school district stand in loco parentis—in place of the parent—for purposes of physical control on school grounds, in order “to maintain order, protect property, or protect the health and safety of pupils, or to maintain proper and appropriate conditions conducive to learning.” (Ibid.) In the same section, the Legislature has required that “Every teacher in the public schools shall hold pupils to a strict account for their conduct on the way to and from school, on the playgrounds, or during recess.”
Although, as indicated above, school officials are not law enforcement agents, they have the foregoing statutory duties. Implicit in their obligation to maintain order, protect school property, and protect the health and safety *572of pupils, is the right of school officials to search pupils and their property on reasonable suspicion of misconduct and a sincere belief that the search is necessary to maintain “conditions conducive to learning.” Such searches “Primarily ... are not undertaken in any law enforcement capacity but are designed to allow enforcement of multiple rules, regulations and prohibitions which are imposed to maintain an atmosphere of security and calm necessary to allow education to take place. This may and does involve controlling students’ behavior, and it may and does involve controlling the deleterious items they are allowed to possess on the premises.” (State v. Young (1975) 234 Ga. 488 [216 S.E.2d 586, 592] cert. den. sub nom. Young v. Georgia (1975) 423 U.S. 1039 [46 L.Ed.2d 413, 96 S.Ct. 576].)
The majority in the instant case create a dilemma for school officials. If the authorities vigilantly protect their classrooms and school grounds from students’ improper conduct, they are likely to run afoul of the majority’s expansive concept of unlawful searches; yet if they fail to act diligently, they assume the risk of civil liability. This court held in Dailey v. Los Angeles Unified Sch. Dist. (1970) 2 Cal.3d 741, 747 [87 Cal.Rptr. 376, 470 P.2d 360], that “California law has long imposed on school authorities a duty to ‘supervise at all times the conduct of the children on the school grounds and to enforce those rules and regulations necessary to their protection.’ ” Inadequate supervision was held to justify tort liability.
The reliance of the majority on the opinion of Justice White in New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985) 469 U.S. 325, 327 [83 L.Ed.2d 720, 725, 105 S.Ct. 733, 736], is puzzling. First of all, it was a plurality opinion; it did not command a clear majority.1 Second, the court held the search of the schoolgirl and her possessions was justified, and affirmed the admission of the evidence and the conviction. From that result, the majority here should draw little comfort.
In upholding the search and conviction, the plurality opinion in T.L.O. made it clear that public school officials “act in furtherance of publicly mandated educational and disciplinary policies” and statutes “establishing the authority of school officials over their students.” (Id. at p. 336 [83 L.Ed.2d at p. 731, 105 S.Ct. at p. 741].) As I relate above, our Legislature has likewise made clear California’s publicly mandated educational and disciplinary policies.
Justices Powell and O’Connor, while concurring in the majority result, added this significant caveat: “The special relationship between teachér and *573student also distinguishes the setting within which school children operate. Law enforcement officers function as adversaries of criminal suspects. These officers have the responsibility to investigate criminal activity, to locate and arrest those who violate our laws, and to facilitate the charging and bringing of such persons to trial. Rarely does this type of adversarial relationship exist between school authorities and pupils. Instead, there is a commonality of interests between teachers and their pupils. The attitude of the typical teacher is one of personal responsibility for the student’s welfare as well as for his education.
“The primary duty of school officials and teachers, as the Court states, is the education and training of young people. A state has a compelling interest in assuring that the schools meet this responsibility. Without first establishing discipline and maintaining order, teachers cannot begin to educate their students. And apart from education, the school has the obligation to protect pupils from mistreatment by other children, and also to protect teachers themselves from violence by the few students whose conduct in recent years has prompted national concern. For me, it would be unreasonable and at odds with history to argue that the full panoply of constitutional rules applies with the same force and effect in the schoolhouse as it does in the enforcement of criminal laws.” (Fn. omitted; id. at p. 350 [83 L.Ed.2d at p. 740, 105 S.Ct. at p. 748].)
On the other hand, if evidence should disclose that a school official was working at the direction of, in cooperation with, or under the authority of law enforcement officers, the exclusionary rule would apply. (See, e.g., Dyas v. Superior Court (1974) 11 Cal.3d 628, 633, fn. 2 [114 Cal.Rptr. 114, 522 P.2d 674].) There was no such evidence in this case; indeed, the evidence is to the contrary.
Here, the vice principal acted after seeing three students on the school grounds at a time when they should presumably have been in a classroom. When approached, the minor involved herein attempted to conceal a bag he was holding and refused to permit the school official to examine it or its contents. The boy’s conduct was comparable to that of the girl in T.L.O. The vice principal promptly took the minor to his office, called in an observer because he feared the minor might flee, and proceeded to investigate further. Only after finding what appeared to be marijuana in the bag did he call law enforcement officials. It was among the vice principal’s usual duties to ascertain whether students who were not in class possessed the necessary permission to be elsewhere. He testified that his routine responsibilities involved “Supervision basically more than security per se.”
The vice principal was thus clearly acting in a supervisory role and pursuant to his statutory authority when he stopped the minor and proceeded to investigate. The latter’s evasive responses and evident recalcitrance gave *574him reasonable suspicion justifying the search. There was no evidence that the vice principal acted in furtherance of law enforcement goals. His concerns and actions were fully appropriate to and consistent with his position as a school official. Indeed, they were consistent with the concerns and actions of the school authorities in T.L.O.
Of course we must be alert to protecting the legitimate rights of students who are suspected of criminal activity or violation of school regulations. However, we must also realize that innocent, law-abiding students have a constitutional right to protection from crime and criminals, and are entitled to a safe school environment. The people of California made that clear when they adopted article I, section 28, subdivision (c), of the Constitution: it provides that “All students and staff of public primary, elementary, junior high and senior high schools have the inalienable right to attend campuses which are safe, secure and peaceful.” In addition, the Code of Ethics of the Teaching Profession provides that the teacher “protects the health and safety of students.” (Cal. Admin. Code, tit. 5, § 80130.) This is both a moral duty and a legal obligation.
The majority opinion in this case will arouse apprehension and cause uncertainty in communities and in school districts. We live in troublesome, indeed hazardous, times. A decade or two ago the potential delinquent pupil was merely truant, smoked cigarettes, and drove hot rod cars. Today the delinquent of the same age is often violent, and some use drugs and deadly weapons.
If we are not to have countless future generations of adult criminals, we must make as certain as possible that we do not permit criminality to begin with juveniles in public schools. We do not have police officers in our classrooms. We do not have parents in our classrooms. Therefore we must give to teachers and principals all the tools they reasonably need to preserve order in classrooms and school grounds.
The juvenile court did not err in denying the motion to suppress the evidence. I would affirm its adjudication of wardship.

One problem with the T.L.O. analysis is its apparent underlying assumption that many high school pupils are now adults, since the lowering of the age of majority. What the opinion unfortunately overlooks is that delinquent and criminal conduct among juveniles often begins in the lower grades of high school, in middle school, and even in elementary school.