Teacher Discipline as a "Seizure"

Legal Forum

Dr. Dave Dagley, Professor Emeritus, University of Alabama

Dr. Amy Dagley, Associate Professor, University of Alabama at Birmingham

Readers of this commentary will remember from their basic school law course that the legal test for searches of students originates from the U.S. Supreme Court case of New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985). T.L.O. held that student searches implicate a constitutional right under the Fourth Amendment, but, due to the special circumstances of schools, school administrators, unlike police officers, are not required to have probable cause to initiate a search; they are only required to have reasonable suspicion. T.L.O.’s legal test teaches that the search: 1) must be reasonable at its inception and 2) must be reasonable in scope. Subsequent case law about student searches also instructs us that, for a search to be reasonable at its inception, the school administrator must have individualized suspicion, i.e., must know the identity of the person who is the subject of the search, unless the circumstances provide the school administrator with one of the small number of exceptions to the rule, where individualized suspicion is waived. A search without individualized suspicion will usually not be considered justified, unless it begins where contraband is seen in plain view, when school property being searched is jointly used by the school and the student, or while conducting an emergency search for a firearm.

The Fourth Amendment refers to both searches and seizures in its protections: “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Because the recognition of the idea of student seizures is a relatively new development in school law, we have noted and written in recent years about cases in these commentaries that are about seizures instead of searches. The earliest case we spotlighted about student seizures was a claim that a student who was required to stay in the assistant principal’s office while the administrator was interviewing witnesses was an unreasonable seizure. The court held that in the circumstances, with school officials making certain the student could go to the restroom, obtain water, and have lunch, while being required to stay in the office was a seizure, but the seizure was reasonable. See, Shuman v. Penn Manor Sch. Dist., 422 F.3d 141 (3rd Cir. 2005). In the spring of 2016, we wrote about cases that involved teachers restraining students, the intervention by school resource officers in student discipline, and the use of timeouts or restraints in the school setting. In the summer of 2023, we contrasted two cases about the use of restraints for students in special education, and the critical importance of: (1) specialized training for teachers and aides in administering restraints; and (2) including specifics about the restraints in the student’s IEP and, especially, in the student’s behavior intervention plan.

On Valentine’s Day two months ago, parents of a student with cerebral palsy received a preliminary injunction against the school board of a career center in Ohio, as part of a suit they brought after they learned that a teacher had restrained, or seized, their son multiple times in the classroom, without apparent provocation or rationale. Joy Brown v. Board of Education, Greene County Career Center, S.D. Ohio Case No. 3:24-cv-14, 2024 WL 620937 (Signed February 14, 2024). This commentary is about that court case.

J.B., the student in the case, complained to his parents that his teacher in a vocational laboratory class had pushed a table into his stomach and pinned him to his chair, and that the teacher had pushed him out of his chair into the floor ten to fifteen times during the school year. The student also complained that the teacher had grasped his hand, bending it backward and causing pain. A fellow student supplied a video of the teacher standing over J.B. and yelling at him. Other students also testified that the teacher had pushed tables into their stomachs, pinning them to their chair, had thrown them out of their chairs into the floor, stood over them and yelled at them, and used profanity directed at them. The teacher would also greet students with a hug or handshake using interlocking fingers, sometimes inflicting pain. While some students characterized the teacher’s actions as “horseplay,” in his analysis on the motion for preliminary injunction, the judge referred to the teacher’s actions as the teacher’s “past unprofessional and reprehensible misconduct.”

The parents brought a Section 1983 action, alleging violation of the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Rehabilitation Act, and Ohio law. “Section 1983” is part of the Civil Rights Act of 1871, which allows a plaintiff to bring a claim against a state official who violates clearly established constitutional or civil rights. The parents were able to receive a temporary restraining order (TRO) that banned the teacher from teaching for a relatively short period of time (2024 WL 199194). While the TRO was in place, the superintendent and school board decided to put the teacher on a “Last Chance Agreement,” a remediation plan, rather than terminating the teacher’s contract. The parents then filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction to ban the teacher from teaching for the remainder of the school year.

The analysis for whether a preliminary injunction is warranted considers four factors: (1) whether the moving party can show a likelihood of success on the merits; (2) whether the moving party will suffer irreparable harm if the injunction is not issued; (3) whether the issuance of the injunction would cause substantial harm to others; and (4) whether the public interest would be served by issuing the injunction. The four factors are not so much a list to be checked off, but rather a means of balancing the interests of the plaintiff, the defendant, and others impacted by the decision.

For the first factor, the plaintiff can show a likelihood of success on the merits, if he or she can show, in this situation, that a school official has violated the Fourth Amendment. In effect, the court must decide whether

For the first factor, the plaintiff can show a likelihood of success on the merits, if he or she can show, in this situation, that a school official has violated the Fourth Amendment. In effect, the court must decide whether a seizure occurred, and if a seizure occurred, whether that seizure was reasonable. A seizure usually occurs when a reasonable person would not feel free to leave. In the school setting, a seizure also occurs when a student is physically restrained in a way that limits the movement of his or her body or limbs. When the teacher used the table to pin the student to his chair, a seizure occurred. Because the seizure was not done for a legitimate safety or disciplinary purpose, the seizure was not reasonable. Thus, the plaintiff has a strong likelihood of winning this case if it goes on to trial.

For the second factor, irreparable harm is presumed in the case of constitutional violations. In this situation, if the plaintiff is not given injunctive relief, the student must daily face the teacher or the student must quit attending that school. For the third factor, harm to others might occur, if there is only one teacher who can teach the material, and other students would not receive the expected curriculum. In this situation, however, there are two teachers who can teach the material, and schedule revision could decrease potential harm to others. For the fourth factor, the public interest is always served by preventing the violation of a party’s constitutional rights.

The court granted the student’s parents a preliminary injunction, but it was not as severe as the TRO that had been awarded earlier. The TRO had kept the teacher out of the classroom and away from J.B. In comparison, the preliminary injunction allowed the school board to implement a plan to return the teacher to teaching, subject to the terms of the Last Chance Agreement, so long as the teacher was not permitted to teach J.B. or to come in contact with J.B.

The judge in this case noted that the decision of the superintendent and school board to place the teacher in remediation under a Last Chance Agreement was, short of contract termination, the most severe punishment that could be given the teacher under the collective bargaining agreement. The judge did not wish to replace the judgment of school authorities with a judgment of his own. There is information we do not have in the few pages the judge used in authorizing a preliminary injunction. The judge does tell us that the teacher had taught for eight years with no other disciplinary issues. But we have no other information about the teacher. We do not know how he reacted when higher authority told him that what he had been doing was improper; we don’t know if he was shocked and contrite, or he was angry and unrepentant. We don’t know if he is motivated to survive the Last Chance Agreement, or to fight it. We don’t know if he did the things he had done out of mischief, immaturity, or malevolence. We don’t know if the school authorities were willing to look past the behaviors because of a general shortage of teachers or a dearth of certified teachers in a hard-to-staff vocational area.

The most important takeaway from this case at this stage is that it recognizes that pinning a student down or shoving a student out of a chair and onto the floor is a constitutional violation, creating the potential for a successful Section 1983 liability claim for an unreasonable seizure against school officials and the teacher. But the facts support more than a seizure claim. In this situation, the parents chose to pursue it as a constitutional violation implicating the Fourth Amendment’s search and seizure clause. The behaviors described could also be an assault under tort law, and they could also support a constitutional claim of violating the Fourteenth Amendment liberty provision, as a violation of bodily integrity. In deciding to choose remediation through a Last Chance Agreement, rather than proceeding to contract termination, we do not know if the school authorities were aware that assaulting students is usually considered a form of immorality in the case law and is not considered remediable.

As a student with cerebral palsy, the student was likely protected from discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. The student was probably not eligible for services in special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). In court cases about restraints and seizures involving students in special education, an important factor in determining whether a restraint or seizure is reasonable is whether it comports with the student’s IEP, especially the student’s Behavior Intervention Plan. In this situation the student is protected by ADA and Section 504; therefore, the student should have something like a Behavior Intervention Plan written into the student’s “504 plan.”