[I]n certain limited circumstances, the Governments need to discover such latent or hidden conditions, or to prevent their development, is sufficiently compelling to justify the intrusion on privacy entailed by conducting such searches without any measure of individualized suspicion."

From the dissent:

"It is a sad irony that the petitioning School District seeks to justify its edict here by trumpeting the schools custodial and tutelary responsibility for children. In regulating an athletic program or endeavoring to combat an exploding drug epidemic, a schools custodial obligations may permit searches that would otherwise unacceptably abridge students rights. When custodial duties are not ascendant, however, schools tutelary obligations to their students require them to teach by example by avoiding symbolic measures that diminish constitutional protections. That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes. "