against T. L. O. in the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court of Middlesex County. T. L. O. claimed the assistant principal's search violated the Fourth Amendment. She moved to suppress the evidence found in her purse as well as her confession, arguing, the evidence was "fruit of the poisonous tree." The Juvenile Court denied the motion to suppress. Although the court concluded that the Fourth Amendment did apply to searches carried out by school officials, it held: "a school official may properly conduct a search of a student's person if the official has a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been or is in the process of being committed, or reasonable cause to believe that the search is necessary to maintain school discipline or enforce school policies." Id., at 341, 428 A. 2d, at 1333 (emphasis in original). The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the search and seizure by school officials without a warrant was constitutional, as long as the search is deemed reasonable. This overturned the New Jersey Supreme Court ruling. Piscataway Board of Education v. Sharon Taxman Piscataway Board of Education v. Taxman, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996) was a racial discrimination case begun in 1989. The school board of Piscataway, New Jersey needed to eliminate a teaching position from the high school Business Education department. Under New Jersey state law, tenured teachers have to be laid off in reverse order of seniority. The newest tenured teachers, Sharon Taxman and Debra Williams, white and African-American respectively, had started working at the school on the same day. In the interest of maintaining racial diversity (Williams was the only black teacher in the department, and 50% of the students were minorities), the school board voted to lay off Taxman, even though she had a bachelor's degree and Williams had a master's degree. Taxman complained to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, saying that the board had violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Taxman. The school board appealed to the United States Supreme Court and a hearing was scheduled for January 1998, but an agreement was reached to pay Taxman a $435,000 settlement before the case could be heard by the court, with a majority of the money coming from civil rights organizations that feared that the Supreme Court could use the case