Although school rules only allow phone use in class when teachers permit it, students can hardly claim they limit their usage to teacher-mandated times.
So what happens if a teacher catches your illicit activities? It turns out, you do not need to swallow your phone.
Administration is not allowed to browse your confiscated phone, except when there is reasonable suspicion that a search will uncover more wrongdoing.
Reasonable suspicion is defined as a lower level of proof than “probable cause.” For reasonable suspicion, “specific and articulable facts” must exist to implicate the individual.
Here are some past court decisions and legal cases that support students’ phone rights against illegal searches.