Abstract
Trying to protect student security can end up endangering it.
On March 6, 2006, in Portland, Oregon, high school junior Abie Ilias and her cousin Brianda Ilias arrived at school more than 30 minutes late. 1 Main office staff followed school policy and sent the girls to the detention room rather than allow their late arrival to disrupt their first classes.
The girls gave Dean of Students Donald Johnson, who was in charge of the detention room, a note signed by Abie's mother. Johnson said each student needed a separate note signed by her own parent, even though Brianda was living with Abie's family.
Johnson also told the girls that their outfits violated the school's dress code. The girls said Johnson was unfairly “picking on us.” Johnson told them that they were giving him too much attitude, and he told them to go home. As they walked out the door, he said that some students think they can do whatever they want. Brianda told Johnson to “shut up.” Johnson ordered the girls back into the room. When they kept walking toward the school exit, he sent two campus security monitors to bring them back to the detention room.
As the girls continued toward the exit, school resource officers Charles Lovell and Ron Cash intercepted them in the hallway. Cash took Brianda by the arm and also tried to secure Abie. When Abie instinctively moved away, Lovell put her into an “escort” hold, and the girls returned to the detention room “amicably.”
Johnson told Cash to have the girls sit down until the bell rang, when they would go to class, and that he would mull over whether he would issue any discipline for the “profanity addressed towards [him].” Cash and Lovell released the girls and told them to sit down. Brianda complied, but Abie, who was crying, “froze up.” Lovell repeated the directive, warning her that if she didn't sit down, they were “going to do it by force.” Abie remained frozen in place. Quickly, Lovell and Cash put her in a neck hold, placed her in handcuffs, and forced her into her seat. They then joined the two campus security monitors on the other side of the room while Johnson remained at his desk.
After about five minutes, Abie asked Brianda to get her cell phone from her backpack and call her mother. About 10 minutes later, Abie's mother arrived at school with her older brother and found Abie handcuffed and crying. Cash and Lovell escorted the group into a room across the hall, where they tried to explain the situation. Abie's mother said she wanted a school administrator at this meeting, and Johnson joined them. After about an hour, Cash took Abie, still handcuffed, into his office and threatened to take her to the police station if she didn't explain to her mother that she was at fault due to having a bad day.
Subsequently, Abie's mother hired an attorney and filed a civil rights suit in federal court against Johnson and the two school resource officers, claiming a violation of Abie's Fourth Amendment rights. Johnson filed a motion for summary judgment, seeking release from the lawsuit based on two alternative contentions — first, that he had no role in the alleged unconstitutional “seizure” because the Portland police department supervised the school resource officers, and second, that he was entitled to qualified immunity in the absence of clearly established constitutional rights.
Court Review
On Nov. 4, 2008, the federal district court in Oregon adopted the findings and recommendations of a federal magistrate, denying Johnson's motion for summary judgment. 2 First, the court rejected Johnson's alleged lack of responsible involvement, reserving the issue for trial. Specifically, the court interpreted the evidence as suggesting that he had “set into motion” the conduct of the school resource officers. Moreover, the court adopted the following reasoning of the magistrate: “Viewed in [plaintiff's] favor, the evidence indicates that the [officers] looked to Johnson for direction, took his direction, and acted to carry out Johnson's order to enforce school disciplinary policies.”
Second, the court similarly rejected Johnson's qualified immunity defense, concluding that it provides “no shield for [a government official] who elected to stand idly by while a person with whom authority is shared, or over whom the individual may have supervisory authority, commits constitutional violations.” The magistrate's recommended decision was that even in the absence of a precedent specifically about this situation, there is no qualified immunity if a reasonable person would know that the conduct in question violates a federal right. The magistrate had further reasoned that Johnson's passively sitting by without interceding when the school resource officers first handcuffed Abie — who “was unarmed, posed no threat, and violated no law” — and then kept her in handcuffs for an hour, despite her mother's presence and with threats of jail, disqualified him from this immunity. This ruling ends the official paper trail of this case in terms of recorded court opinions.
However, an inquiry to the parties' attorneys revealed that on Aug. 8, 2009, the case proceeded to trial, and at the end of the evidence on Abie's side, the court granted Johnson's motion for judgment as a matter of law. The judge concluded that Abie had not made a sufficient case against him for the jury to find him liable and that, alternatively — now having heard the evidence and assessed it neutrally — Johnson was entitled to qualified immunity. Her claims against the school resource officers proceeded to the jury, which returned a verdict in their favor.
Despite representing only an inconclusive and temporary victory, the originally reported decision stands as a sobering reminder of the responsibility of public school officials when making arrangements for so-called “school resource” officers in an effort to maintain school safety. This case shows that trying to protect student security can end up endangering it. Generational and cultural differences may have led to the escalating misunderstanding between Abie and Dean Johnson, but a police presence in the school also contributed to the situation.
Indeed, the case is not an outlier. A quick review reveals several recent court cases where school security officers — as compared with summoned outside police — have handcuffed students. 3 In some cases, the students were a clear and present danger, and in others, the school security officers were clearly overdoing police tactics at the expense of the traditional school-student relationship.
For many years, judges and other public figures have vociferously opposed hamstringing and handcuffing public school officials from exerting their disciplinary discretion. 4 The school police efforts to solve this problem seem to have turned the tables, if not the tide. As evidenced by the staffing of the detention room in this case, the school culture moved several notches from the paternal to the prison side of the spectrum.
In short, this case suggests that the school scene has changed from a Ferris Bueller-like experience to a Judge Dredd-type billy club.
Generational and cultural differences may have led to an escalating misunderstanding between a student and administrator, but a police presence in schools also contributed to the situation.
NOTES
Because the court's opinion was in response to a motion for summary judgment, the “facts” are merely allegations viewed in the light most favorable to the opposing party, which here is the plaintiff-student.
Ilias v. Johnson, 2008 WL 4838846 (D. Or. 2008). I obtained supplementary information via e-mail from the defendants' counsel, Karen Vickers, and Abie's attorney, Spencer M. Neal, on November 5, 2009.
See, for example, Gray v. Bostic, 458 F.3d 1295 (11th Cir. 2006) (female elementary school student); Overton v. Hamilton County, 2009 WL 2601848 (W.D. Ky. 2009) (female high school student); Williams v. Underhill, 2009 WL 2012646 (D. Nev. 2009) (female high school student); Rogers v. Cook, 2008 WL 5387642 (N.D. Ill. 2008) (male high school student); Richardson v. Bd. of Educ. of Jefferson County, 2007 WL 2319785 (W.D. Ky. 2007) (male high school student); Pope v. Cherokee County Bd. of Educ., 562 F. Supp. 2d 1371(N.D. Ga. 2006), affirmed, 218 F. App'x 911 (11th Cir. 2007) (male high school student with autism and mental retardation); Samuels v. Indep. Sch. Dist. No. 279, 2004 WL 1326800 (D. Minn. 2004) (male junior high school student).
See, for example, Tinker v. Des Moines Indep. Cmty. Sch. Dist., 393 U.S. 503, 524 (1969) (Black, J., dissenting) (student threat to school discipline); Goss v. Lopez, 419 U.S. 565, 592-93) (1975) (Powell et al., JJ., dissenting) (need for discipline and order). For an example of the more modern debate, see, for example, Perry A. Zirkel, “Paralyzing Fear: Avoiding Distorted Assessments of the Effect of Law on Education,” Journal of Law and Education, October 2006: 461–495.