Pro-2A Group In Legal Showdown With School District After Search Of Student’s Truck

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) requested summary judgement Thursday in a case where a principal and cop searched a student’s truck after learning he owned firearms.

SAF initially sued over the search in October 2025 on behalf of Hillsboro-Deering High School student Jack Harrington over an April 2025 incident. In the complaint, SAF argued that the search violated Harrington’s Fourth Amendment rights.

“On April 24, 2025, Defendants—based solely on Jack’s status as a lawful firearms owner—removed him from class at HDHS in front of his classmates during regular instruction,” the initial complaint says. “At Crawford’s instruction, Defendants then subjected Jack to a coercive interrogation without his parents or an attorney present (the “Interrogation”), in which they demanded permission to search his truck (the “Subject Vehicle”), which was then parked in the HDHS campus parking lot, for firearms.”

“Neither Jack, nor his parents Thomas and Betsi … as the Subject Vehicle’s owners, consented to a search of the Vehicle,” the complaint continued. “Nonetheless, after the Interrogation in which Jack repeatedly refused to consent to a search and after Jack’s parents were contacted by phone and similarly refused to consent to a search, Defendants searched the Subject Vehicle anyway, finding no firearm (the ‘Illegal Search’). At the time of the Illegal Search, Jack’s legally owned firearm was safely stored at the Harringtons’ home, nowhere near the school campus.”

Second Amendment Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the reason for the search stemmed from a story that eventually filtered to the principal, and that they lacked even “reasonable suspicion” for the search.

“Typically, reasonable suspicion in the general law enforcement sense is what is required for a law enforcement officer to detain you, so they have to have some particularized facts that some criminal activity could be afoot,” Sack added. “So, that’s what’s required for them to just like say if they want to stop and talk to you for a minute and you’re not free to go, so that’s what’s called being detained. That’s what they need.”