Group of students at a graduation celebration

Campaigns & Initiatives

Students Not Suspects

Last updated on July 22, 2015

Students Not Suspects

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[UPDATE]June 18, 2019[/UPDATE] VICTORY! In a 4-3 vote, the LAUSD board of education voted today to end all random metal detector searches in the district by July 1, 2020.

Thank you to the youth activists who fought for a school environment where school safety means building trust & protecting the dignity of all students rather than criminalizing them.

Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has a policy, BUL 5424.1, of requiring staff at all secondary schools to conduct daily random metal detector searches of students. Under the policy, students are often pulled out of classes while an administrator searches their bodies with a metal detector and rifles through the belongings in their bags, even when there is no indication that they have broken a rule or law. In certain circumstances, teachers are required to stop their classes and pull students out to an adjacent room to personally conduct the searches.

The policy is harmful to school climate, reduces learning time and has the potential to lead to unconstitutional searches. ACLU SoCal, along with United Teachers of Los Angeles, Public Counsel, Community Rights Campaign, Youth Justice Coalition and Street Poets, has been working to scale back or eliminate the random metal detector search policy.

[UPDATE]June 1, 2018[/UPDATE] ACLU SoCal and partners release a report, Here To Learn, that provides a full analysis of LAUSD's mandatory metal detector search policy. Read the report.

[UPDATE]February 23, 2016[/UPDATE] ACLU SoCal and Public Counsel send LAUSD a letter of concern regarding its metal detector policy. Read the letter.

[UPDATE]October 26, 2015[/UPDATE] LAUSD updates its Metal Detector Search Policy, BUL 5424.0. Read the policy.

[UPDATE]July 2, 2015[/UPDATE] ACLU SoCal and Public Counsel send LAUSD a School Climate complaint regarding its metal detector policy. Read the complaint.

[UPDATE]July 21, 2014[/UPDATE] LAUSD updates its Metal Detector Search Policy, BUL 5424.0. Read the policy.