Challenging Student Searches

President Reagan, in a speech before the National Forum on Excellence in Education late last year, called for a return of discipline to make American public schools "temples of learning, not drug dens." The Justice Department heeded that call last week. In a friend-of-the-court brief, Justice urged the Supreme Court to establish that students do not have full protection of the Fourth Amendment against warrantless searches and that school authorities may search students for drugs or any other evidence of school violations on grounds of "reasonable suspicion."

The court's test case deals with a Piscataway, N.J., high school assistant vice principal who inspected the purse of a student suspected of smoking cigarettes in a rest room. He found marijuana, which was used as evidence in a drug charge brought against the 14-year-old student. The New Jersey Supreme Court threw out a delinquency verdict against the girl last year, ruling that the drug had been seized illegally. The U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments on the case last spring but declined to rule, will probably act on the issue next term.