About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

121 Penn St. L. Rev. 309 (2016-2017)
Rethinking Student Cell Phone Searches

handle is hein.journals/dlr121 and id is 331 raw text is: 







Articles


Rethinking Student Cell Phone Searches


Marc C. McAllister*

                             ABSTRACT

     In Fourth  Amendment analysis,   warrants are  often required to
search for evidence of criminal wrongdoing. However, under the search-
incident-to-arrest warrant exception, once an individual has been placed
under custodial arrest, certain warrantless searches may follow, such as a
search for weapons or evidence possibly within the arrestee's reach. In
Riley  v. California, 134  S. Ct.  2473  (2014), the  Supreme   Court
unanimously  rejected the proposed extension of the search-incident-to-
arrest exception to cell phones, thereby requiring a warrant to search a
phone's  digital contents. Although Riley recognized that arrestees have
reduced  expectations of privacy, the privacy concerns in a cell phone's
digital data were simply too great to allow such  data to be searched
without judicial approval.
     This  article examines Riley's impact on  searches of K-12   and
 college students' cell phones as an incident to a violation of law or
 school rule, and proposes heightened Fourth Amendment  protections in
 both contexts. First, this article argues that although college students
 enjoy reduced Fourth Amendment   protections when campus  safety and

 * Marc McAllister teaches courses and writes on topics involving criminal law and
 procedure. His articles have been published in respected journals such as the Cincinnati
 Law Review, Florida State Law Review, Hofstra Law Review, Seattle Law Review, and
 Case Western Reserve Law Review.


309

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most