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Edweek recently featured a story on two cases coming before the Supreme Court next month that deal with proper protocols of police and school officials in questioning students. School officials are concerned that the court’s decision could put them in an untenable gatekeeping position between police and students. Thus, the National School Boards Association—an LFA member—has filed a court brief outlining concerns with the issues the case brings up that implicate administrators.

The first case—Camreta v. Greene—deals with an incident in 2003 when a state child protective services caseworker and a deputy sheriff in Oregon interviewed a 9-year-old girl at school about suspected sexual abuse by her father. The mother claims that after denying abuse for two hours the girl finally told investigators what they wanted to hear (though charges against the father were later dismissed), and that the interrogation violated the girl’s Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable seizure. A lower court ruled in favor of the mother, arguing that questioning of a child at school requires a warrant or parental consent.

The second case—J.D.B. v. North Carolina—is based on a 2005 interrogation by police and an assistant principal of a 13-year-old special education student regarding recent thefts in the area. The student confessed to the crimes and was deemed a delinquent, but appealed claiming the interrogation at school constituted being in custody and so he should have been given a warning about his Miranda rights. 

The Oregon case comes down to whether authorities need a warrant or parental consent before interviewing at school a suspected victim of parental sexual abuse, and the North Carolina case is about whether a juvenile’s age is a factor in determining whether questioning constitutes being in police custody and thus requires Miranda warning about constitutional rights. 

Part of the significance of these cases lies in the fact that there is an increasing police presence in schools, so people are concerned about proper boundaries and actions of the school and law enforcement. And while these two cases focus more on legal responsibilities of police and courts, school administrators are also implicated in both.

In the Oregon case, the mother sued the Bend-La Pine school district and the school counselor who removed the girl from class in addition to the investigators. Though a federal district court dismissed the district and counselor as defendants, and the mother did not pursue the issue on appeal, the case still causes concern for school officials. Such concern was elaborated by a joint filing of a friend-of-the-court brief (linked in the first paragraph of the post) in the Camreta case by the Oregon School Boards Association and the National School Boards Association that sides with investigators. It notes that some states require schools to give police access to students in child-abuse investigations, which they argue is premised on the assumption that neither a warrant nor parental consent is constitutionally required in those circumstances. The brief states that “if the presumption underlying these statutes is incorrect and school districts and officials are potentially implicated in a ‘seizure’ merely by allowing access to a student, then they are cast in the very uneasy and ultimately untenable role of gatekeeper.”

Some on the other side make arguments that allowing police to pull children out of class and question them behind closed doors compromises schools as safe environments for students. But the fact that 40 states affirm police access to students at school makes it unfair to expect school officials to negotiate between police and students in these situations. And beyond the legal difficulty for school administrators, officials highly prioritize getting children out of abusive situations. While certainly agency workers can mishandle questioning and other procedures—as may have been the case here—and individuals should be reprimanded accordingly, we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Schools are one of the most common places where child abuse comes to light, and can provide a more comfortable and familiar interviewing environment since police departments or other agency buildings can be intimidating, and it is not reasonable to question children at their homes when family members are suspected of the abuse. Taking away the school avenue in cases in which obtaining a warrant or parental consent is untenable would be a disservice to many abuse victims.

Regarding the North Carolina case, it sounds as if  there are valid arguments on both sides of the issue about whether age should come into play in providing Miranda warnings, and regarding what constitutes police custody. But regardless of which way the court rules, again it would be unfair to put undo expectations on school officials to have to police the police in student interrogation scenarios when state laws require law enforcement access to students in schools.