Hillsboro-Deering school district says search of gun-owning student’s truck was not illegal

Hillsboro-Deering High School administrators did not break any laws when they searched a student’s car for a gun last spring, a lawyer for the school district contended in a legal filing this

week.

The filing was in response to a lawsuit filed this fall by Jack Harrington, a recent high school graduate who asserted school officials violated his Fourth Amendment rights when they searched his truck while he was a student last April.

The search followed a conversation Harrington had with a classmate, in which he said he had recently been stopped by police while driving with the gun in the glove box compartment of the truck. That conversation, which occurred on the bus to a school sporting event, was overheard and ultimately reported to school administrators.

Harrington was pulled out of class and questioned about the conversation and the gun, according to his complaint. He said he told the school’s principal, vice principal and school resource officer that he doesn’t bring the gun to school, but they asked to search his car anyway.

He argued in his lawsuit that he was pressured into agreeing to the search. The district’s lawyer, Christine Friedman of the Concord-based firm Friedman Feeney Getman, disputed that characterization, stating the search conducted was not “illegal” and Harrington’s permission was not “coerced.”

Searches conducted at schools must satisfy a comparatively lower standard than searches conducted in most other places. While the typical standard requires probable cause, at schools, the searcher must only possess “reasonable suspicion” that the search will turn up evidence that the student is violating the law or school policy.

Lawyers for Harrington have argued that the search of his truck failed to meet even that lower bar.

“Defendants had no information whatsoever that would have given rise to a reasonable suspicion that Jack was storing a firearm in [his truck] while on campus,” they wrote.

The lawyer for the school district wrote that the search was not based “solely” upon Harrington’s status as a firearms owner but did not further explain the rationale for the search.

The school district’s response also disputed the nature of the search. Lawyers for Harrington claimed the school’s vice principal “thoroughly investigated every area” of the vehicle, while the school district’s lawyer stated it was confined to the glove box.

Harrington is represented by the Concord-based firm Lehmann Major List, PLLC, as well as a Texas law firm. The case is being supported by the Second Amendment Foundation, which works to protect legal gun ownership.

The case will now likely proceed to the discovery phase.

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