Posted on 04/02/2008 3:39:20 PM PDT by neverdem
There are two kinds of people in the world: the kind who think it's perfectly reasonable to strip-search a 13-year-old girl suspected of bringing ibuprofen to school, and the kind who think those people should be kept as far away from children as possible. The first group includes officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona, who in 2003 forced eighth-grader Savana Redding to prove she was not concealing Advil in her crotch or cleavage.
It also includes two judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, who last fall ruled that the strip search did not violate Savana's Fourth Amendment rights. The full court, which recently heard oral arguments in the case, now has an opportunity to overturn that decision and vote against a legal environment in which schoolchildren are conditioned to believe government agents have the authority to subject people to invasive, humiliating searches on the slightest pretext.
Safford Middle School has a "zero tolerance" policy that prohibits possession of all drugs, including not just alcohol and illegal intoxicants but prescription medications and over-the-counter remedies, "except those for which permission to use in school has been granted." In October 2003, acting on a tip, Vice Principal Kerry Wilson found a few 400-milligram ibuprofen pills (each equivalent to two over-the-counter tablets) and one nonprescription naproxen tablet in the pockets of a student named Marissa, who claimed Savana was her source.
Savana, an honors student with no history of disciplinary trouble or drug problems, said she didn't know anything about the pills and agreed to a search of her backpack, which turned up nothing incriminating. Wilson nevertheless instructed a female secretary to strip-search Savana under the school nurse's supervision, without even bothering to contact the girl's mother.
The secretary had Savana take off all her clothing except her underwear. Then she told her to "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts," and "pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area." Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between drug warriors and child molesters.
"I was embarrassed and scared," Savana said in an affidavit, "but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked. I held my head down so they could not see I was about to cry." She called it "the most humiliating experience I have ever had." Later, she recalled, the principal, Robert Beeman, said "he did not think the strip search was a big deal because they did not find anything."
The U.S. Supreme Court has held that a public school official's search of a student is constitutional if it is "justified at its inception" and "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place." This search was neither.
When Wilson ordered the search, the only evidence that Savana had violated school policy was the uncorroborated accusation from Marissa, who was in trouble herself and eager to shift the blame. Even Marissa (who had pills in her pockets, not her underwear) did not claim that Savana currently possessed any pills, let alone that she had hidden them under her clothes.
Savana, who was closely supervised after Wilson approached her, did not have an opportunity to stash contraband. As the American Civil Liberties Union puts it, "There was no reason to suspect that a thirteen-year-old honor-roll student with a clean disciplinary record had adopted drug-smuggling practices associated with international narcotrafficking, or to suppose that other middle-school students would willingly consume ibuprofen that was stored in another student's crotch."
The invasiveness of the search also has to be weighed against the evil it was aimed at preventing. "Remember," the school district's lawyer recently told ABC News by way of justification, "this was prescription-strength ibuprofen." It's a good thing the school took swift action, before anyone got unauthorized relief from menstrual cramps.
© Copyright 2008 by Creators Syndicate Inc.
looking at nude pubescent girls
I’ll add that to your list of fantasies.
You’re the feeb defending the perverts.
No, they don't. But when inventing facts is all you've got...
I've noted your fantasies. I haven't defended them.
And the little girl knew this how? Did anyone read her her rights? Did anyone call her parents? Or did they simply rush the kid into a backroom and ogle her crotch?
“I haven’t defended them.”
You’ve effectively defended these perverts all over this thread with the tone of your posts. Either the girl is wrong or the authorities were wrong. You haven’t been on the side of the child here, that is for damned sure.
She wasn't under arrest. Another fantasy?
From the facts set out in the actual decision:
Redding denied bringing pills to school, denied distributing pills to her classmates, and told Wilson that she did not mind being searched.
Of course, the facts aren't nearly as titillating as your imagination.
The tone?
Pesky old facts ruining your fantasies.
“She wasn’t under arrest. Another fantasy?”
Ever heard of the 4th amendment to the Constitution?
Ever hear of the Tenth Amendment?
You are the dumbest most illogical person I have seen post on this forum, and that is going some.
Nope, you keep trotting out the facts. We read the case, and know that facts. This girl was forcibly strip searched for Advil by school officials. Those are facts. Your fantasy is that this is all just peachy keen under the law.
The collective of freerpublicans here are fixing to gather up our pictforks, boil up some tar, collect some old feathers and go hunting two reprobate judges who are too dumb to protect our womenfolk from a bunch of dirty old authoritiarians and who are too stupid to understand there are certain things for which we really do have zero tolerance. Possession of Advil does not shock our conscience. Strip searching teenagers to look for said Advil does, however, shock our conscience and we are disgusted that we could have any man sitting on judgment of another human being who is not likewise shocked disgusted and horrified at this grotesque overreach of state power.
Those two judges should be praying that the en banc hearing correct their folly, and then they ought to ask forgiveness of this girl, and spend some time in quiet contemplation of their roles in the order of things.
You’re the one claiming that a loss isn’t a loss because the ACLU hopes that they might get it overturned.
The logic of the left.
The 10th amendment does not reverse the 4th amendment, idiot. The 4th withholds the power of unreasonable search and seizure from the states, and so the 10th does not grant that power.
There is a lot more than hope at work. They were granted leave to request and en banc review. That means that the Court decided that there were probable grounds for reversal, and it is the state that should be sweating bullets.
Redding denied bringing pills to school, denied distributing pills to her classmates, and told Wilson that she did not mind being searched.
Your personal fantasy:
This girl was forcibly strip searched
Maybe you can write a letter to Penthouse Forum.
Does it not shock your conscience that state authorities would ask a girl to strip so that they could look for Advil?
Dude, it's f#$&ing Advil!!! Jesus Christ.
The 4th Amendment didn't apply to the states, liberal. That was an act of judicial activism in 1949.
While you leftists dream of local public school being micro-managed by federal judges, even the haven't reached the point of demanding that student recieve rights statements outside of arrests.
The drugs weren't identified until later. You keep forgetting that. Very conveniently.
Among other drugs later identified. Not to mention razors and knives.
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