Should New York City Remove Metal Detectors from Its Schools?

The title of this post poses what might sound like an odd question, but a debate over whether to remove  metal detectors from New York City's schools is gaining in prominence for two reasons.  First, the last shooting in a New York City school was in 1992.  Second, metal detectors are not uniform practice in the district.  Rather, they tend to only be used in predominantly minority schools.  The LA Times reports that "almost half of black students are scanned daily, while only 14% of white students are."  From a legal perspective, this disparity on its own does not trigger scrutiny under Title VI regulations (prohibiting disparate impact).  Advocates would also need to demonstrate a harm or denial of benefit.  Many would argue that being asked/forced to walk through a metal detector is is not an invasion of privacy.  It is definitely not an individualized search that would required reasonable suspicion under the Fourth Amendment.  On other hand, the New York City Civil Liberties Union says that "[m]aking students have to go through metal detectors to go to school sends a terrible message to students about where they are headed and how they are viewed."  This sounds like a stigmatic or psychological injury.  This type of injury has, of course, be used in racial discrimination cases since Brown v. Board.  For understandable reasons, however, the current debate is proceeding as a policy debate rather than a legal one.  See here.  That debate is devolving into one of safety versus racial fairness.  That one may be even harder to resolve.