The Colorado Supreme Court decided this month that a tip submitted through the state’s confidential school safety system, plus a Douglas County administrator’s corroboration of some details, provided reasonable suspicion to search a student’s backpack for drugs.

Someone submitted a tip through Safe2Tell, Colorado’s school safety reporting system, alleging a Chaparral High School student was smoking marijuana in biology class. The tip also described the student and indicated he was spraying cologne to mask the smell. Forty-five minutes later, Assistant Principal Craig Bowman received the tip.

Bowman verified whether the student, identified as T.J.W., could have plausibly been in the biology classroom and whether the physical description matched. T.J.W. displayed no signs of drug use when he arrived in Bowman’s office, but a search of the backpack turned up a marijuana vape pen.

Although a trial judge blocked the evidence from being used against T.J.W. because the Safe2Tell tip did not provide reasonable suspicion of a crime, the Supreme Court concluded that the tip, combined with Bowman’s corroboration of certain details, rendered the backpack search constitutional.

In a June 1 opinion, Justice Brian D. Boatright explained that it did not matter that Bowman had not received independent verification of T.J.W.’s alleged marijuana use by the time of the search.

“It is true that corroboration of criminal activity is one way to enhance the reliability of a tip,” Boatright wrote. “Instead, any kind of corroboration of the information in the tip, whether of criminal conduct or otherwise, can bolster the reliability of an anonymous tip because it allows officers to confirm a tipster’s basis of knowledge and veracity.”

T.J.W.’s case implicated a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court decision, New Jersey v. T.L.O., which addressed the constitutional prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures in the school context. The court acknowledged that students retain some privacy rights while in school, but the need to maintain order “does not require strict adherence to the requirement that searches be based on probable cause.” Consequently, the court found school officials are typically justified in initiating warrantless searches when there is a reasonable belief of uncovering evidence of a legal or rule violation.

The question for the state Supreme Court was whether the anonymous Safe2Tell tip supplied that belief.

“It seems like there was ample corroboration, at least of the identity of the individual,” Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez told the prosecution during oral arguments. “What we don’t have, and you seem to acknowledge, was corroboration of the actual activity. Is that necessary? And if not, I will express some concern.”

“What we don’t have,” added Justice Richard L. Gabriel, “is somebody who said, ‘I smelled the marijuana in the classroom. I smelled the cologne in the classroom.’ So, we don’t have direct corroboration of the alleged criminal activity.”

Michael S. Juba, representing T.J.W., asked the court to avoid ruling that the anonymity of the Safe2Tell tip contributed to its reliability.

“The anonymity of this program does not give it more reliability. It gives it less reliability,” he said, noting T.J.W.’s alleged conduct occurred “in a classroom full of students and the teacher, (without) any indication that something was going on, this was marijuana being smoked in a classroom.”

In the court’s opinion, Boatright referenced the U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition that law enforcement’s ability to corroborate “significant aspects” of an anonymous tip can create “some degree of reliability” for the uncorroborated allegations of criminal conduct. In T.J.W.’s case, the Safe2Tell tip was fairly recent and several of the details accurately conveyed T.J.W.’s whereabouts and description.

“Bowman’s corroboration of these details before the search established that the tipster had some basis of knowledge and partially confirmed the tipster’s veracity,” wrote Boatright. “Thus, we hold that the search of T.J.W.’s backpack was ‘justified at its inception’ because the anonymous Safe2Tell tip, combined with Bowman’s independent corroboration, supported a finding of reasonable suspicion.”

District Attorney George Brauchler, who is also a Colorado Politics opinion contributor, said the Safe2Tell program is successful in addressing school safety risks, and “I appreciate our Supreme Court unanimously lending greater clarity to the standards law enforcement will use moving forward with these tips.”

The attorney for T.J.W. declined to comment.

The case is People in the Interest of T.J.W.