A Teacher Demands To See Your Phone – Do You Have To Unlock it? Here’s What The Experts Say:

In Brief:

•📹 What: TikTok video sparked an investigation, leading to the search of J’s phone by school staff without parental notification.

•❓ Why: The school investigated allegations of cyberbullying after the video highlighted students dressing as animals, questioning privacy rights.

It started with a short TikTok video.

The video, which we won’t show here as it reveals the identity of a minor, shows a student at an Okaloosa County Middle School, whom we will call J, complaining.

The dry delivery highlights a group of students at the school who like to dress up as animals and make animal sounds while in class – much to the annoyance of this student. He goes on to complain that the school is “getting taken over” by the students who he says identify as “furries”.

“They are a little distracting,” J said in an interview with Mid Bay News after the incident, “some kids that wear that stuff were barking at school. So that’s kind of distracting to me whenever I was trying to work.”

Eventually, according to the student, whom we will call J, he is called into administrative offices at his school. Without his parents present, he says employees of the Okaloosa County School District questioned him. He claims that they accused him of bullying a student. “I was sitting in my fourth period, and I got called up to the disciplinary office,” J said, “They said someone had reported me for taking pictures and videos of them and putting them on TikTok.”

The student says he pulled out his phone and showed the employees his Tik Tok account and the video he posted. The video, which we could view, did not name any other students but did name potentially identifying characteristics of particular students’ dress like animal tails and other articles of clothing.

J says the administrators were unsatisfied after he showed them his TikTok account. They wanted to see all of his photos. “So, she goes through my camera roll, and she likes scrolls through, and then she makes me go through my recently deleted and hidden pictures,” he remembers, “and then I ha[d] to write a statement defending myself.”

In that statement, J says he told whoever would read the statement he “didn’t take any pictures or videos of [his accuser] and didn’t post them to social media.

He also says, he never would have made a statement or shown them his phone if he had known he was not required to.

J’s Parents, Kelcie and Kenji Kojiwara were, to put it mildly, not thrilled about the search. “I was never contacted, I still haven’t been contacted,” Kelcie Kojiwara said, “they shouldn’t be able to look at a kid’s phone without notifying the parents. And, I feel like, if they call your kid to the office, they should notify you.”

J says administrators checked his phone, found no incriminating photos, and sent him on his way from the office without any punishment.

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School District

Mid Bay News contacted the Okaloosa County School District about the accusations. OCSD Spokeswoman Catherine Card told us in a statement the school district must investigate all allegations of bullying – including cyberbullying. “When such concerns arise, administrators follow a careful process to assess the validity of the claims and prioritize the safety and well-being of all students,” Card said in an email, “With regard to searches of students’ phones, district procedures align with applicable laws, including protections under the Fourth Amendment. Searches are only conducted when there is reasonable suspicion that a violation of school policy or law has occurred. While students have the right to refuse to comply, their parents are contacted immediately to address the matter.”

According to the Okaloosa County School District’s Secondary School Code of Conduct, students are not allowed to “capture, record or transmit the words (i.e. audio) and/or images (i.e. pictures/video) of any student, staff member or other person in the school or while attending a school-related activity during the school day, without express prior notice to such individual(s) and explicit consent from the school principal or his/her designee for the capture, recording or transmission of such words or images. Using a wireless communications device to take or transmit audio and/or pictures/video of an individual without his/her consent is considered an invasion of privacy and is not permitted.”

What Rights Do Students and Administrators Have When It Comes to Searches on Personal Phones at School for Non-Criminal Reasons?

According to Northwest Florida Defense Attorney Jay Patel of Jay Patel Law, situations like this one are fraught with caveats. “Phones are basically the new frontier of great challenge for people’s rights, for law enforcement,” Patel noted when talking about J’s incident at school.

But here is how the process should work if you are either a student suspected of violating board policy or a teacher/administrator trying to enforce the rules at school.

If law enforcement accuses a student of a crime, law enforcement must meet the standard of probable cause to initiate a search.

In the case of a violation of school board policy, like taking pictures or video without permission, the standard of reasonable suspicion is the bar that a teacher or investigator must clear to move forward. The standard of reasonable suspicion is defined in this legal case as “reasonable grounds to suspect that a search will result in evidence that the student has violated the law or school rules” [emphasis added]. According to a document laid out by then-Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, reasonable suspicion is “more than a mere hunch or supposition.”

According to Patel, if a student accuses another student of violating school board policy but not Florida law, the investigating teacher or administrator must first find corroborating reports. A single accusation is not strong enough to take action on, Patel notes.

While a single accusation won’t meet the legal standard necessary to search, the administrator can rely on many more factors when using reasonable suspicion than probable cause. These factors include a student’s “age, history, record in school, prevalence or seriousness of a problem in the school in which the search is directed, the exigency in making the search without delay or further investigation, the probative value and reliability of the information used as the justification for the search and the particular teacher or school official’s experience with the student.”

From there, the teacher or administrator can request to search a student’s phone for evidence of violating the school’s policies. A student doesn’t necessarily have to submit to the request automatically or in the way that the teacher or administrator lays out.

If a teacher or administrator suspects a violation of school policy but not of Florida law, the student has four options when asked to show the contents of their phones:

Say yes. A student can show the teacher or administrator their phone and allow it to be searched. The teacher or administrator can should search in the narrowly tailored limits they have set up for their investigation. For example, suppose a teacher had reasonable suspicion that J had taken photos of another student without their consent in the last month. In that case, they should only look at photos taken in the last month in relation to the allegation at hand. This is a tricky area because they have the ability to report it, and law enforcement can investigate. This is one of the dangers to opening up the phone for a full search.
Say yes, with limits. A student can allow, just like J did, administrators or teachers to search only a specific part of their phone. Teachers and administrators can then ask to search more – if the student says yes, then they can continue their search. If they say no, the search should stop there.
Ask for their parents or a lawyer. If a student asks for parents or a lawyer, the teachers or administrators should contact their parents and/or their lawyer. However, the ACLU warns that the rules governing questioning for teachers or administrators are not as strict as those governing law enforcement personnel.
Say No. In J’s case, if the student has denied the search and is not offering the password to the phone. The school administrator should contact law enforcement to determine if the violation of school policy is also a violation of Florida Law. If it is not a violation of Florida Law, there may be little the school administrator can do to find further evidence. If it is a violation of Florida Law, a law enforcement officer should submit a search warrant. A “Law enforcement officer has to state that he has probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and that there is a nexus to [a student’s] phone,” Patel says, “Breaking a school rule is not always breaking Florida law, so a law enforcement officer shouldn’t submit [that application for a warrant] to a judge for a rule violation and judges know when they shouldn’t sign off on applications.”