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![handle is hein.sag/sagfl0030 and id is 1 raw text is: Florida Attorney General
Advisory Legal Opinion
Number: INFORMAL
Date: January 10, 2007
Subject: Searches of students by school personnel
Ms. Beverly A. Morris
Marion County School Board Attorney
808 S.E. Fort King Street
Ocala, Florida 34471
Dear Ms. Morris:
As attorney for the Marion County School Board you have asked for
assistance relating to searches of students by school personnel. You
have identified information in the Attorney General's School Search
Manual and requested authority for certain statements in the
manual.
Florida courts have determined that the appropriate standard for
school searches is reasonable suspicion. In order for reasonable
suspicion to exist, the action must be justified at its inception,
and the search must be reasonably related in scope to the reason for
the search.[1] The state is required to elicit specific and
articulable facts which may reasonably warrant the intrusion when
taken together with rational inferences from those facts.[2]
Following the United States Supreme Court decision in New Jersey v.
T.L.O.,[3] Florida courts have recognized that, under ordinary
circumstances, a search of a student by a school official will be
justified at its inception when there are 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.[4] As the Fourth District Court of Appeal recently stated in
State v. Bullard, [5] [t]o have either a reasonable or founded
suspicion, the detaining officer must have a particularized and
objective basis for suspecting the particular person stopped of
criminal activity based upon the totality of the circumstances.[6]
It is this requirement of individualized suspicion that the text of
concern in the School Search Manual appears to address.
Determining whether a particular search of a school student is
justified is a mixed question of law and fact that must be addressed
on a case-by-case basis. This office has attempted to provide](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.sag/sagfl0030&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)