Toronto students win court petition over prom breathalyzer
Posted February 24, 2015 5:44 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Two Toronto high school students get an “A” for taking on the system.
They petitioned the court over their school forcing students to take a breathalyzer on prom night, and won.
Last year the principal at Northern Secondary School, Ron Felsen, wanted students to take a breathalyzer before heading into their prom. Felsen said he had a good reason for the decision.
“We had a number of cases of students arriving to the prom intoxicated and unfortunately we’ve had to send students to hospital,” Felsen said. “The breathalyzer would have been a good deterrent.”
Felsen said he had public consultations regarding the breathalyzers and spoke with other schools like Malvern Secondary, which has been doing breath tests at proms for about a decade.
But two teens felt the breath testing was inappropriate and petitioned the court.
The superior court concluded that forcing kids to take breath tests would infringe on their constitutional rights as being an unreasonable search and seizure.
The Toronto District School Board said it is reviewing the superior courts decision to determine what type of broader impact this will have on schools across the city.
