Worth County High School was buzzing with late-year activities on April 14. Seniors had recently taken their group photo for the yearbook and were days away from voting for their prom king and queen.

But on that Friday, beginning around 8 a.m., dozens of police appeared on campus and announced that the school was on lockdown, which lasted until about noon. In that time, police officers searched all, or nearly all, of the approximately 900 students at the school, in Sylvester, Ga., in the southwest part of the state.

On June 1, with the help of the Southern Center for Human Rights and Horsley Begnaud, L.L.C., a law firm, nine of the students sued the sheriff and his deputies, alleging that they lacked the jurisdiction to carry out the body searches, which the lawsuit called “unreasonable, aggressive, and invasive.”

“I’ve never seen a sheriff do something this obviously unconstitutional, on such a broad scope, in my practice,” said Mark Begnaud, a lawyer representing the students.