The Colorado Supreme Court considered last week what constitutional safeguards are necessary when school officials place students on “safety plans” that call for routine searches, even when there is no reasonable suspicion of an offense.

The case might be the first in the country scrutinizing student safety plans, and balancing the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches with the reduced expectations of privacy U.S. Supreme Court has schoolchildren have.

Although the parties and outside organizations argued to Colorado’s justices about the need to ensure school safety in an era of frequent mass shootings, the only major area of disagreement during oral arguments Wednesday revolved around a narrow question: Did Denver Public Schools put a student on notice that he was subject to searches under his safety plan?

“Everybody agrees notice is required,” said public defendthe said er Mark Evans. “The whole reason we send kids to school is to learn to be good citizens. And if we want the citizenry that respects and defends the constitutional rights of others, we have to respect and defend the constitutional rights of our schoolchildren.”

Evans represented a John F.

Kennedy High School student identified as J.G. After J.G. was adjudicated delinquent — the juvenile equivalent of being found guilty — of two gun-related offenses, school officials developed a safety plan for him in early 2019. Among other protocols, J.G. was not allowed access to backpacks or lockers and would need to be searched daily.

J.G.’s mother attempted to enroll him at a different school for the 2019-2020 school year, but she ended up hastily reenrolling him at Kennedy the week before school started. A “reentry meeting” was supposed to happen with J.G., but it never did. Instead, J.G. attended school for two days without being searched.

On the third day, the school resource officer and an administrator took J.G. aside and demanded to search his backpack. J.G. resisted, prompting the officer to restrain J.G. while another security official examined the backpack. A loaded handgun was inside. The officer placed J.G. under arrest and a judge again adjudicated J.G. delinquent for the offense.

“The whole reason we send kids to school is to learn to be good citizens. And if we want the citizenry that respects and defends the constitutional rights of others, we have to respect and defend the constitutional rights of our schoolchildren.” Mark Evans, public defender