McLean Co., KY: McLean Co Schools now using texting to report bullying
Educators are implementing a new kind of anonymous tip line that allows students to send text messages about any issue without giving their names. The approach shows great promise, because it shortens the time-line from incident to report to investigation. There will be more developments reported on the texting strategy as legal challenges are raised about the uses to which the information is put by educators. A few thoughts on this appear below.
The issue of liability, if any, for actions taken based on a tip will turn on concerns about the reliability of the texting tips. In the informant cases, courts take a hard look at tips that come from questionable sources or have no corroboration. Many of the rules have been forged outside the education context. Despite this, the application of the rules to programs like “Crime Stoppers” and “Silent Observer” hotlines has been consistent and useful.
Information provided by an informant can serve as a basis for reasonable suspicion that a student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school. An anonymous tip can provide reasonable suspicion when it is placed in context with other information or events, so that the “totality of the circumstances” shows that the tip is reliable. (See Illinois v. Gates, 462 U.S. 213 (1983)). Such tips will support any search when it is reasonably related to the duty of educators to maintain a safe learning environment and not excessively intrusive.
Overall, the major advantage of the texting tipline is that it allows educators to use their broad supervisory and disciplinary authority to detain a student and investigate a tip without worrying about student rights of any kind. This “detain and interrogate” authority in the response to an anonymous tip serves well the interest of educators to keep their campus safe. As one court puts it, “[t]o allow minor students to challenge [such a] decision…as lacking articulable facts supporting reasonable suspicion would make a mockery of school discipline and order.” (In re Randy G., 26 Cal. 4th 556, 28 P.3d 239, 245 (Cal. 2001)). Another court says of this, “when a school official stops a student to ask a question, it would appear that the student’s liberty has not been restrained over and above the limitations he or she already experiences by attending school”. (J.D. v. State, 920 So. 2d 117, 121 (Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 4th Dist. 2006)). The U.S. Supreme Court has stated, on two occasions, that the reasonable expectation of privacy is reduced in public schools enough to support investigations of this nature without reasonable suspicion of any kind because the interest in maintaining safe schools is “compelling.” (See Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646 (1995)). (See also, Board of Education v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 843 (2002)).
As to reasonable suspicion, educators can effectively combine anonymous tips with their authority to search a student by remembering the following rules:
- a tip from an informant who has provided information in the past, and whose trustworthiness is proven or whose basis of knowledge is known, establishes enough of a factual predicate to meet the reasonable suspicion standard.
- the detailed nature of a tip weighs in favor of its accuracy. A tip that specifies a particular student, in a particular place, at a particular time of day contains predictive information and meets the reasonable suspicion standard.
- receiving an informant’s information in-person provides enough elements of reliability” to create reasonable suspicion.
- an uncorroborated tip about the presence of weapons or explosives creates an emergency that justifies an immediate search.
- a school official can always stops a student to ask a question without worrying about the Fourth Amendment.