By David Sapp and Nayna Gupta

Do rights exist if the people who have them don't know about their existence or don't feel confident in asserting them?

Thomas Jefferson observed that "[s]elf-government is not possible unless the citizens are educated sufficiently to enable them to exercise oversight."  Put differently, rights don't exist if we don't know about them. When it comes to rights, use it or lose it.

Educational Equity is a priority for the ACLU of California because education is the foundation of a functioning democracy.  Here in California, students have a fundamental right to equal education opportunity. But that’s just the starting point. Students have other rights, including when it comes to being suspended or expelled, dressing for school, expressing opinions and ideas, during school searches, using cell phones and social media, and being pregnant or an LGBTQ student.

But all of these student rights mean nothing if students don't know what those rights are or are afraid to stand up and assert them.

That’s why ACLU of California has launched MySchoolMyRights, a multi-media campaign intended to educate students on their rights and empower them to have a say in their education. William Pleasant, a 17-year-old student from Fresno who was nearly suspended for wearing long hair to school says, “just because we’re students doesn’t mean that we don’t have a voice.”

Our campaign explains the rights of students on seven different issues that affect students across California every day.  Included are rights that trace their roots to the founding our Nation, and others that have developed more recently, including some that the ACLU and our partners have fought to define or extend.

MySchoolMyRights also features the voices of students who have experienced adversity when their rights were not respected. Sixteen-year-old Sasha Rawlinson, suspended after being interrogated by police officers based on a fake social media post bravely shares his story because he “want[s] all students to know that it’s important for them to protect themselves and to know their rights at school.”

Sasha’s story and our resources are available and can be shared in three different ways: on the #MySchoolsMyRights website, through the ACLU MobileJusticeCA app (available for download on iTunes or the Android store), or as printable PDFs.

Share this information and these stories with your friends, your children, your grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, your nephews, your church youth groups, your youth soccer team, whomever. 

If you don’t, our students will end up feeling like Reginae Hightower, a 15-year-old from Oakland whose rights were violated in the school suspension process. She says, “I feel that I was cheated as a student going to school and not knowing all my rights.”

We the People must continually renegotiate and redefine our rights and teach the next generation about them and the hard-fought battles to establish or defend them. Student rights secured even a decade ago can be meaningless if we don't keep them front-and-center.

We hope our campaign and website is a small help in meeting that ongoing challenge.  Help us spread the word on student rights by using it and sharing our information and these powerful student stories.

MySchoolMyRights.com

David Sapp is director of education advocacy with the ACLU of California, and Nayna Gupta is racial justice fellow.

By Linda Lye

In response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, the Sacramento sheriff has now admitted that it used intrusive cellphone surveillance technology – commonly known as a “StingRay” – without obtaining court approval. Days after this stunning admission, the sheriff publicly announced a new policy for the use of StingRay technology. While having an actual policy in place is certainly a step in the right direction, the new policy raises serious concerns.

First, the sheriff’s announcement implicitly acknowledges but sidesteps two important and troubling revelations. Before this week, the sheriff had no policy in place for using this surveillance technology. And as a matter of practice, the sheriff routinely used the device without obtaining any court authorization at all. Law enforcement should not be deploying powerful surveillance technology on an ad hoc basis and with no court oversight. That’s just not the way our constitution works.

Second, the sheriff only says that he will seek judicial review before using a StingRay. It doesn’t say that the sheriff will seek a warrant based on probable cause.
Because StingRays are indiscriminate, highly intrusive devices that obtain information from innocent third parties, and not just the target of an investigation, there is a serious question whether they can ever be used consistent with the Fourth Amendment. But at a minimum, the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant for their use because StingRays can pinpoint cell phone users’ location, even when they are inside their homes or other private spaces.

The policy should require the sheriff to obtain warrants, in other words, to demonstrate to a court probable cause to believe that a suspect has engaged in criminal wrongdoing. Obtaining some unspecified “judicial authorization” based on weak information isn’t enough.

Third, the policy states that data from the StingRay “shall not be used to support probable cause for a search warrant or arrest. Officers from the department and allied agencies shall develop independent probable cause for any search warrant or arrest.” This means that the sheriff’s office will use the result of a StingRay search in the course of an investigation, but then create a parallel paper trail (“independent probable cause”) to justify the conclusions they came to based on StingRay surveillance.

This highly problematic practice seeks to insulate the sheriff’s warrantless use of a StingRay from constitutional challenge. We’ve seen federal agencies create parallel paper trails in order to avoid legal challenges to troubling forms of surveillance. The sheriff is trying to do the same thing. But due process means that people accused of a crime have a right to know the actual steps taken in an investigation – including whether questionable surveillance tools were used to create a case against them.

Although the sheriff has said he started developing the policy in May – shortly after the filing of the ACLU’s lawsuit – in an “effort to maintain public trust,” the policy still has a long way to go.

Linda Lye is senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California.