In Re Gault
—Minors’ Rights
In June 8, 1964 an Arizona teenager named Gerald Gault was arrested for allegedly making an obscene phone call to a neighbor, Mrs. Cook. His parents did not know he had been arrested and when they returned home, Gerald was no where to be found.
The Gaults finally located Gerald at the Marcazea County Children’s Detention Center in Arizona, in the custody of the arresting officer, deputy probation officer Flagg. The Gault’s lawyer immediately filed a petition of habeas corpus on Gerry’s behalf arguing that their son had been denied his rights under due process.
The hearing on the petition was not held until August 17, 1964. The judge then said that because Gerald was under the age of eighteen years, he was in need of protection by the court; and that said minor was a delinquent minor.
Gerald’s accuser was not present at a June 15th hearing. He denied making the call. Witnesses differed in their recollections of Gerald’s initial remarks. Officer Flagg agreed that Gerald did not admit to making the lewd remarks. Gerald’s parents recalled that Gerald said he dialed the number and handed the phone to Ronald Lewis, his friend, who then made the remarks. The two boys, may have, said Officer Flagg, blamed each other but this was not clear. In any event Gerald was, at the conclusion of the hearing on June 15th, found to be at fault and was committed as a juvenile delinquent to the state industrial school “for the period of his minority (that is, until 21) unless sooner discharged by the due process of law.” He was 15 years old at the time making this a six year sentence.
For an adult charged with a similar crime the penalty in Arizona at this time earned a maximum penalty of a $50.00 fine and two months in jail. The reason for this large discrepancy is that in 1964, judges were allowed to act “in loco parentis” or in place of parents. They could use their own judgement as to innocence or guilt without regard to due process, the right of confrontation and cross-examination, the privileges against self-incrimination, and the right to a transcript to the proceedings. Teenagers were not protected by the Constitution in this case in the same way as adults would have been protected.
The Arizona Supreme Court agreed with the initial decision in the Gault case saying that the adult and juvenile court systems had different aims and the latter should not be subject to strict adult regulations. Gerald, they said, had not been treated differently from other juveniles, therefore, the decision to confine him was upheld.
Unconvinced, the Gault’s attorney appealed to the Supreme Court. In May of 1967 the court responded changing the entire juvenile justice system. The Court ruled 8-1 that the 14th Amendment applies to juveniles. Juvenile offenders have the right to know the charges against them, to have a lawyer represent them, and to confront witnesses. They must also be told of their right not to testify against themselves.
The one dissenting opinion in the Gault case was from Justice Potter Stewart. His belief was that juvenile proceedings are not criminal trials and that the objective of the juvenile court is to correct a condition; not to convict and punish a criminal, which is the purpose of a criminal court. Justice Stewart gave an example of a 12 year old child named James Guild who, during the l9th century in New Jersey, was tried as an adult for the murder of Catherine Beakes. A jury found him guilty and sentenced him to death by hanging. The sentence was executed by the state of New Jersey. Justice Stewart believed it was not the place of the juvenile court to treat children as adults as in the dark world of Charles Dickens and warned of this danger in the Gault decision.
Goss v. Lopez
—Student Suspensions
The case of
Goss v. Lopez
stemmed from race related student riots at Central High School in Columbus, Ohio in 1971. The principal suspended 75 students for racial disruptions in the lunchroom and damaging school property. One student, Dwight Lopez, insisted he was innocent. He did not, however, get a hearing to tell his side of the story. Along with eight other students, they brought their case to court.
A federal court agreed with the students that they had a right to a hearing. School officials appealed. Finally on January 2, 1975, the court affirmed the decision of the three judge panel by a 5-4 vote saying that under the l4th Amendment, people cannot be denied liberty without due process.
Lawyers for the school district had argued that there is no constitutional right to education, so due process does not protect against suspensions. They would further say that due process only applies if a student suffered a “severe loss.” The loss of ten school days (Lopez’s punishment) was not, in their eyes, severe. The court disagreed.
In the book,
In Defense of Children
Franklin Zimring and Rayman L. Solomon state that
Goss v. Lopez
presents a very basic question dealing with the management of the school. Are schools like a family model where problems are resolved in the way that a family resolves problems or are schools more like the bureaucratic model followed in society? In the family model the principal would usually act as the father in resolving problems. Zimring and Solomon feel the traditional family model was a thing of the past by the time the court heard this case. Granting students hearings before suspensions further changed the history of school government.
Writing for the dissent in this case, Justice Powell stated, “Discipline did not represent harm but was itself an integral part of education. It is no less important than learning to read and write.” This idea went along with the dissent opinion by Justice black in the Tinker decision when he wrote, “School discipline, like parental discipline, is an integral and important part of training our students to be good citizens—to be better citizens.
New Jersey v. T.L.O.
—Students Searches
In Piscataway High School in 1980, a teacher discovered a 14 year old freshman and her companion smoking cigarettes in the school lavatory in violation of a school rule. He took them to the principal’s office where they met with the vice-principal. When the respondent, in response to the vice-principal’s questioning, denied that she had been smoking and said she did not smoke at all, the vice-principal demanded to see her purse.
Upon opening the purse, he found a pack of cigarettes, marijuana, an index card containing a list of students that owed money, and two letters implicating her in marijuana dealing. The juvenile court held that the Fourth Amendment applied to searches by school officials but that the search in question was a reasonable one and adjudged respondent to be a delinquent. The Superior Court of New Jersey agreed with the juvenile court but the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed the decision and ordered the suppression of the evidence found in the respondent’s purse, holding that the search of the purse was unreasonable. School children, they said, have legitimate expectations of privacy.
The school appealed to the Supreme Court and the case was decided on January 15, 1985. The lawyers for the school argued that teachers must be permitted to keep discipline, and this includes searching students’ lockers and purses. T.L.0.’s lawyers argued that the search violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban against unreasonable searches and seizures.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court decided that while the 4th Amendment protects students against unreasonable searches, teachers do not need “probable cause” to think that a crime has been committed in order to conduct a search.
In adult cases police must suspect that a crime has been committed. This is not true in schools. School officials need only to have “reasonable grounds” that there has been a violation of school rules. The court said searching T.L.O.’s purse was reasonable.
Justice Brennan writing for the dissent said that, “It would be incongruous and futile to charge teachers with the task of imbibing their students with an understanding of our system of constitutional democracy, while at the same time immunizing those same teachers from the need to respect constitutional protections.”