05-22-2023, 05:09 PM
Tiangou wrote:
[quote=PeterB]But the mere act of taking the phone doesn't constitute either assault or battery, if the school's policy is that the phone can be confiscated. Otherwise, any time a teacher or administrator were to take a phone, that would be assault or battery, which is obviously not the case.
It's assault and battery if the teacher grabs it from the student. Having a policy in place that permits that is unlawful. A school board can't simply say "we can break any law we want so long as we have a written policy in advance that allows us to do so."
...It's not assault and battery if the teacher has a bin for phones at his/her desk and requires that all students drop off their phones at the beginning of class, or demands that all students power-off their phones before class, or stands in front of a misbehaving student and demands the phone from them. It's not assault and battery if the teacher sends an uncooperative student to the principal's office for punishment. These are potential solutions that do not involve violence.
I don't disagree with you in theory, but how exactly are you supposed to confiscate a phone without physically taking it away from the student? (Edit, obviously you should ask for the phone first, but if a student refuses... then what? Sending them to the principal's office is not really an option for the reasons mentioned above...)
If you want to argue that the school policies violate the law, fine, but the law-- as it currently exists-- disagrees with you. Otherwise, confiscating the phones would be illegal, and all the links I posted make it clear that it isn't.