From Judge Robert Jonker's opinion today in Ashton v. Okemos Public Schools (W.D. Mich.):
[Plaintiff's] daughter, E.B., served a time-limited expulsion from her high school after she lied to her parents and to the police about her interaction at school with an administrator and tried to get another student to back her false story. E.B. actually admits she falsely accused the administrator but Plaintiff nevertheless claims the school was wrong to discipline E.B. for it. Plaintiff further claims the school and its administrators are liable for overbroad search policies and for retaliatory school discipline. There is no genuine issue of material fact and Defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of law….
In 2021, school officials at Okemos High School began spot checking school bathrooms to stem a rise of violence and to curb vape and e-cigarette use amongst its students. Vape pens and other like devices are more difficult for school officials to detect than traditional tobacco and marijuana products because they are easier to conceal and do not emit odors. But experience taught the administrators that students would often congregate in a single bathroom stall to vape together, and so the spot checks included a brief look underneath the bathroom stall partitions from public areas in the bathroom to see if multiple students were in the same stall together. Nothing in policy or practice permitted officials to look inside the stall in a way that would allow viewing of students using the toilet.
In the spring of 2022, … E.B., was subject to two searches by school officials. The first search was a minimal no-contact search of E.B.'s person after another student complained about E.B. and other students vaping in the school bathroom. The second search took place approximately three weeks later when E.B. was in a bathroom stall speaking with another student. During that search the assistant principal, Alison Cironi, conducted a spot check and leaned down from a common area to look underneath the stall partitions.
But the story E.B. later told her parents was that the assistant principal had approached E.B.'s stall and looked into it while E.B. was urinating. Based on their daughter's report, E.B.'s parents complained to the school and then to the police. It quickly became clear, however, that E.B.'s story about Ms. Cironi was not true. Compounding matters, it later came out that E.B. had asked another student to lie for her, and that E.B.'s friends threatened that student to back up E.B.'s falsehood. A disciplinary hearing was held, and the school board decided to expel E.B. for 180 days.
