Brannum v. Overton County Sch. Bd., No. 06-5931 (6th Cir. Feb. 20, 2008)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit (KY, MI, OH, TN) has ruled that the use of video surveillance equipment in middle school boys’ and girls’ locker rooms violated students’ Fourth Amendment right to privacy. School officials at Livingston Middle School (LMS) in Overton County, Tennessee had video surveillance equipment installed in the boys’ and girls’ locker rooms as part of an effort to improve security at the school. Several LMS students sued the members of the Overton County School Board, the superintendent, LMS’ principal and the assistant principal, alleging violation of the students’ constitutional right to privacy. A federal district court denied defendants’ qualified immunity from the suit. The Sixth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part, finding that the school board members and the superintendent were entitled to qualified immunity because they did not authorize the locker room videotaping and were unaware of it. On the other hand, it found such immunity did not extend to the principal and assistant principal because they were involved in the decision to install and use the equipment, and viewed and retained the videotapes.
However, before reaching the qualified immunity question, the court first had to determine if the installation and use of the cameras amounted to a constitutional violation and whether that violation was clearly established at the time the violation occurred. The appeals court first explained that the students’ privacy claim was subject to analysis under the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. It pointed out that neither the U.S. Supreme Court nor the Sixth Circuit “has ever addressed the applicability of video surveillance to the Fourth Amendment’s proscription against unreasonable searches.” Applying Supreme Court precedent in Vernonia Sch. Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515 U.S. 646, 656 (1995), and New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 334 (1985), the appeals courts found “the ultimate measure of the constitutionality of such searches is one of reasonableness.” It concluded that the purpose of setting up video surveillance was appropriate and not subject to judicial veto but that the scope and manner in which the video surveillance was conducted was subject to Fourth Amendment limitations. While acknowledging that students had a lower expectation of privacy in the school environment, the appeals court concluded it was “satisfied that students using the LMS locker rooms could reasonably expect that no one, especially the school administrators, would videotape them, without their knowledge, in various states of undress while they changed their clothes for an athletic activity.” It found that the scope of the secret surveillance constituted a significant intrusion on students’ reasonable expectation of privacy, an expectation that trumped school officials security concerns, especially in light of the fact that “there [was] no history of any threat to security in the locker rooms.”
Turning to the question of whether it was clearly established videotaping students in various states of undress violated their privacy rights, the appeals court found that “a person of ordinary common sense, to say nothing of professional school administrators, would know without need for specific instruction from a federal court, that teenagers have an inherent personal dignity, a sense of decency and self-respect, and a sensitivity about their bodily privacy that are at the core of their personal liberty and that are grossly offended by their being surreptitiously videotaped while changing their clothes in a school locker room.” It further stated: “But even if that were not self-evident, the cases we have discussed, supra, would lead a reasonable school administrator to conclude that the students’ constitutionally protected privacy right not to be surreptitiously videotaped while changing their clothes is judicially clearly established.”
Brannum v. Overton County Sch. Bd., No. 06-5931 (6th Cir. Feb. 20, 2008)