School administrators face the daunting task of keeping their school free from drugs and weapons while balancing the Constitutional rights of students.  Fortunately, the courts around the country understand the importance of this task, and thus, have provided a more lenient legal standard for school personnel than for police officers when conducting searches.

For example, in Myers v. Indiana, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld a police canine sniff of an automobile and the resulting search and seizure of a firearm, by school officials.ⁱ  In this case, school administrators initiated a drug sweep of a high school and police officers were called to assist; although the police were present, the school administrators decided the parameters of the drug sweep and had a police canine sniff the exterior of unoccupied cars in the school parking lot while the students were in class.  The canine alerted to Myers automobile and school officials, not the police, searched the vehicle.  A firearm was located and Myers was arrested.  Myers filed a motion to suppress the firearm as fruit of an unlawful search.  The trial court denied his motion and he appealed. 

The Indiana Supreme Court first considered whether the canine sniff of the exterior of an unoccupied automobile was a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.  In Illinois v. Caballes, the United States Supreme Court held that the canine sniff of the exterior of a lawfully stopped automobile, as long as the detention is lawful, is not a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.ⁱⁱ  In Myers, the automobile was unoccupied and the owner was in class.  Thus, the owner, Myers, was not unlawfully detained during the sniff.  Therefore, the canine sniff of Myers’ automobile was not a search and no reasonable suspicion was required to initiate the sniff.

They then had to determine whether the presence of the police during the search made the search a “police search” that required probable cause and a search warrant or whether the search should be governed by the more lenient standard of New Jersey v. T.L.O.  The Indiana court considered that other courts that have examined this issue have considered three possible search scenarios:

(1) where school officials initiate the search or police involvement is minimal, the reasonableness [T.L.O.]standard is applied; (2) where the search is conducted by the school resource officer on his or her own initiative to further educationally related goals, the reasonableness [T.L.O.] standard is applied; and (3) where "outside" police officers initiate the search of a student for investigative purposes, the probable cause and warrant requirements are applied.ⁱⁱⁱ

In Myers, the trial court determined that the school initiated and conducted the searches and were only assisted by the police.  Although the police selected the date for the search, the school officials provided a range of dates to the police and the date of the search was within that time frame.  Additionally, the school officials determined the areas to search and “sniff” and they actually conducted the searches.  The police narcotics canines were used because the school did not have dogs with this capability.  Based upon these facts, the Indiana Supreme Court found that the search in Myers was more akin to scenario number one (1) above and, as such, the reasonableness standard of T.L.O. should apply rather than the police probable cause and warrant standard.

The remaining issue for the Indiana Supreme Court was to determine whether the search of Myers’ automobile that resulted from the canine sniff was within the reasonableness standard set forth in the United States Supreme Court decision of New Jersey v. T.L.O.^iv  In T.L.O., the high court, while acknowledging that students do have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their personal items at school, noted that this privacy interest must be balanced with “the substantial interest of teachers and administrators in maintaining discipline in the classroom and on school grounds.”^v  Part of this balance is the elimination of the search warrant requirement when the search is initiated and conducted by school officials.  Thus, the Supreme Court held that for a search by a school official to be legal within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment the search must be “reasonable.” 

The U.S. Supreme Court has opined that a search is “reasonable,” if it meets two requirements.  First, the search must be justified at its inception.  A search is justified at its inception if “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."^vi  The second requirement is that the search be reasonably related in scope to the circumstances that justified the search in the first place.^vii  Thus, the measures used to search must be “reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction."^viii

In Myers, the Indiana Supreme Court reasoned that canine sniff and alert on the automobile by a trained narcotics dog certainly provided reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence of a crime.  Then, the search of the car was reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive because the search was limited to places that the trained narcotics dog alerted.

Thus, in light of the above discussion, the court ruled that the evidence was lawfully obtained and admissible in c