National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida

December 24, 2009

Dr. Atherley,

Over the past weeks, our organization has received several complaints regarding certain
conduct on the part of Spanish River administrators and school police officers. It is our
understanding that employees of Spanish River Community High School and the Palm
Beach County School District, acting in their official capacities, performed searches of
students’ vehicles and personal effects at the school’s November 7, 2009 Homecoming.
While we understand your intention and do believe it to be laudable, we see these
searches as grave and unjustified violations of students’ privacy, perfidious in that they
represent an inappropriate use of the school’s authority, and an exploitation of both the
fear and naïveté of some students.

We are the National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida, a contingent of the
National Youth Rights Association, the nation’s largest youth-led civil rights
organization. We are committed to defending the rights not only of our 10,000 members,
but also of young people all across the country. NYRA of Southeast Florida represents
youth throughout the tri-county area and beyond. We have many members who attend
Spanish River and as such, it is incumbent upon us to address this situation. If any of the
facts upon which our conclusions are based are incorrect, I apologize in advance; based on
the information currently at our disposal, we deemed this to be an appropriate response.

As we believe that the intentions of your employees were pure and that your true
objective is to educate students to be good citizens, it is our desire to work with you to
solve this problem. It is our belief, as it is the Supreme Court’s: “that [schools] are
educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional
freedoms of the individual, and if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and
teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes.” West
Virginia State Board of Ed. V. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 637 (1943). As I am sure you are
aware, the Supreme Court has responded to claims that school officials are not bound by
the restrictions of the Fourth Amendment by explaining that, “Such reasoning is in
tension with contemporary reality and the teachings of this Court…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.” New
Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985).

Further, the Court has concluded, and referenced in T.L.O., that even a limited search of
the person is a substantial invasion of privacy. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 24-25 (1967).
Our reports indicate that administrators (or police officers) boarded the limousines and
busses of students who arrived at Homecoming. We have been told that the school
employees did not, in at least several cases, request permission to search the vehicle either
 National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida

from the company that owns the vehicle, from the driver, or from the students. We have
been told that administrators proceeded to rifle through backpacks and purses belonging
to students and “open a water bottle and smell the liquid inside.” The Court has
recognized, in the case of a student who was searched by school authorities, that “searches
of closed items of personal luggage are intrusions on protected privacy interests” and that
“the Fourth Amendment provides protection to the owner of every container that
conceals its contents from plain view.” New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985) and
United States v. Ross, 456 U.S. 798, 822-823 (1982). In the Court’s T.L.O. opinion, it
adjudged that “A search of a child’s person or of a closed purse or other bag carried on
her person, no less than a similar search carried out on an adult, is undoubtedly a severe
violation of subjective expectations of privacy. “

As both you and I know, any driver or any student had the right to refuse a search by
school or law enforcement officials. Our worry, as buttressed by the reported
pervasiveness of the searches, is that the students were, in the aggregate, unaware of that
right. It is our understanding that school officials simply boarded the vehicles and
conducted the searches without so much as an explanation. It is our worry that the
natural trust between students and school officials may have been taken advantage of, as
it seems the students failed to question or prohibit the searches. There is a “two-fold
inquiry” that the Supreme Court has prescribed to be used to determine the
“reasonableness of any search [of students].” Following the New Jersey v. T.L.O standard,
a search must first be “justified at its inception.” In order to fulfill that criterion, there
must be “reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the
student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.”
Unfortunately, it is clear that that procedure was not followed at Spanish River’s 2009
Homecoming, because if all busses and limousines were not searched, the method of
choosing which ones to search was certainly arbitrary. That there could be truly
reasonable grounds to search every vehicle would surely be an anomaly of inarticulable
scale. The T.L.O. standard’s second criterion is that such a search “will be permissible in
its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search
and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of
the infraction.”

Given both the case law and the explicit meaning of the Fourth Amendment, we do
believe, though we stress our confidence that the intent was pure, that the searches were
unreasonable. We recognize that in order to ensure the perpetuity of the United States
and the rights that we enjoy, education about such liberties must begin at the school level.
We ask that you please confirm that no students have been disciplined as a result of these
searches. We also ask that you pledge to discontinue this practice permanently and agree
not to search the vehicles in which students are traveling (or their personal effects
contained within those vehicles) at any school-sponsored event (i.e. Homecoming, Prom,
football games). We also recognize that this issue presents a unique opportunity to
educate students about their constitutional rights. If doing so is your desire, our
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organization would be more than happy to work with Spanish River to implement such a
program.

Thank you so much for your consideration, your attention to this important issue, and
your anticipated cooperation. You can feel free to contact me via email at
Jeff@16toVote.org, by phone at …………, or through postal mail at
…………………………………………………….

Best Regards,

Jeffrey Nadel
Founder and President
National Youth Rights Association of Southeast Florida
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