A Time for Change

CNN and the New York Times report that in 2003, 13 year old Savana Redding, who was in an eighth grade honors program and no disciplinary record at the Safford Middle School, was stripped searched by school officials after a friend and fellow student who was found in possession of 400 mg Ibuprofen accused her of over the counter prescription-level Ibuprofen to her.  

“The school has a zero-tolerance policy for all prescription and over-the-counter medication, including the ibuprofen, without prior written permission.”  

A search of Redding’s backpack found nothing. Then, although she never had prior disciplinary problems, a strip search was conducted with the help of a school nurse and Wilson’s assistant, both females. According to court records, she was ordered to strip to her underwear and her bra was pulled out. Again, no drugs were found.

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Savana was told to pull her bra in a way that exposed her breasts, and to pull out her underwear to expose her pelvic area. Savana, who was too scared to refuse, later called the search “the most humiliating experience” in her life.

Savana, now 19, claims that she was traumatized by the search. It is not hard to imagine how a 13 year old child would be traumatized by being strip searched by two adults.  ”Savana’s mother sued the school district, charging that her daughter’s Fourth Amendment rights had been violated.”

The issue before the Supreme Court is “whether school administrators are constitutionally barred from conducting searches of students investigated for possessing or dealing drugs that are banned on campus. A federal appeals court found the search ‘traumatizing” and illegal.’”   The ACLU claims that the real issue is ”how easy it is for school officials to strip search your child.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is handling the case for Savana, believes that the school overreacted.

Some parents say older children deserve the same constitutional rights as adults, but educators counter a school setting has always been treated differently by courts, and a ruling against them could jeopardize campus safety.

While a federal magistrate and a three-panel appeals court found the search was reasonable, the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Redding last year.

“Common sense informs us,” wrote the court, “that directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen … was excessively intrusive.”

The court said the school went too far in its effort to create a drug- and crime-free classroom. “The overzealousness of school administrators in efforts to protect students has the tragic impact of traumatizing those they claim to serve. And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen.”

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the school district said restrictions on conducting student searches would cast a “roadblock to the kind of swift and effective response that is too often needed to protect the very safety of students, particularly from the threats posed by drugs and weapons.”

School officials said the court was “wholly uninformed about a disturbing new trend” — the abuse of over-the-counter medication by teenagers.

The Supreme Court has previously ruled that students School officials said the court was “do not “shed their constitutional rights … at the schoolhouse gate.”

But decisions in the 1980s gave administrators greater discretion, including one case that said officials need not be required to have a warrant to search a student’s locker. Such a search was permitted if there were “reasonable” grounds for believing it would turn up evidence and when the search was not “excessively intrusive.”

Opinions in 1995 and 2001 allowed schools to conduct random drug testing of high school athletes, and those participating in other extracurricular activities.

And in a well-publicized 2007 ruling from Alaska, the Supreme Court upheld the suspension of a student who displayed a large “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner at an off-campus, but school-sponsored, event. The decision did not endorse a broader argument that students in general have limited free-speech rights when they interfere with a school’s vaguely defined “educational mission.”

At stake is the amount of discretion a school may have over children.  In this case, in my opinion,the school  went too far.  What would be the harm in keeping the child in a room until the parent arrived?The child was alone, uncomfortable, vulnerable, helpless and violated with no prior record and an apparently good academic record yet this strip search was conducted based on the word of a friend and former student?      

As the New York Times wrote, “The invasion of privacy was extreme and the security rationale weak. The court should rule, as a lower appellate court did, that the search was unconstitutional.”

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