The Fourth Amendment was engraved into the Bill of Rights for very specific reasons: to prevent the government from randomly sifting through private property in hopes of finding something–anything–to prosecute citizens for.
That’s why the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed Harrington v. Crawford on behalf of an 18-year-old high school senior from Concord, New Hampshire, against his former high school principal and other defendants.
Last week, the organization submitted a reply brief in further support of the plaintiff.
Lawful gun ownership should not trigger a warrantless search
Because he owned a legal firearm, the school administration found cause to search Jack Harrington’s truck. Even though the young man never brought the weapon to school.
SAF Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack explained that just knowing the young man legally owned a firearm away from campus was not justification for the search and subsequent interrogation.
“They had no information to indicate he had ever brought the gun to school or had done anything illegal or against school policy whatsoever,” the gun rights advocate declared. “The search they conducted could not have been supported by probable cause or even reasonable suspicion.”
School officials allegedly twisted ‘consent’s’ meaning to
Sack added that school officials heard Harrington repeatedly withhold consent for the search. When they told the young man that they would go through the vehicle no matter what he said, he then replied, “Okay.”
The SAF brief noted that coercion invalidates any consent “no matter how subtly the coercion was applied.”
An assistant coach learned that police stopped Harringon off campus and that he had his legal firearm in his glovebox. There was no reasonable suspicion that Harringon was carrying the handgun onto school property, which is illegal.
But a school administrator claimed that any possibility “above zero” is enough cause to dig around in a private vehicle.
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