State ex rel. Juvenile Department v. M. A. D.

This juvenile delinquency case requires us to decide when a public school official’s search of a high school student for illegal drugs is permissible under Article I, section 9, of the Oregon Constitution. We conclude that, when school officials at a public high school have a reasonable suspicion, based on specific and articulable facts, that an individual student possesses illegal drugs on school grounds, they may respond to the immediate risk of harm created by the student’s possession of the drugs by searching the student without first obtaining a warrant.

After school officials received a…