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.
I graduated high school in 1994. Not all that long ago. People brought Leathermans, Advils, all sorts of scary stuff to school, and you know what, we all turned out just fine. What a miracle. We even *gasp* sneaked cigarettes every now and then. What a bunch of scumbags we were.
I admire your succinctness.
So all local public schools in the country should be run based on your personal preferences, enforced by federal judges and the ACLU.
Got it.
It is you who is fantasizing facts. The search of Redding was specifically for f#$&ing Advil, dude. Go read the case again, dude.
thank you for your support Tiger. Its refreshing to see how many good people are in the world.
We’ve let boneheads distract us with legal words and need to retake our country. Laws don’t make the people; people make the laws.
Well, yeah. It's obvious that I have more of a brain than this retard principal.
You still refusing to understand the difference between search and touch?
A "deliberate" fantasy. Which is why you didn't provide any such quote from the decision.
School officials may have had sufficient information to perform some kind of search of Savana for prescription-strength ibuprofen. There is little question that a search of Savana’s backpack and her pockets would be constitutionally permissible, given that Savana’s friend and classmate Marissa had reported that Savana had provided her with the ibuprofen. But the appropriate inquiry is whether a strip search was justified at its inception. See, e.g., Phaneuf v. Fraikin, 448 F.3d 591, 597-600 (2d Cir. 2006); Cornfield v. Consolidated High Sch. Dist., 991 F.2d 1316, 1321 (7th Cir. 1993).
The only credible connection between Savana and an impending distribution of prescription-strength ibuprofen was Marissa’s statement that Savana had provided her with the pills found on her person. However, our sister circuits have concluded — properly in my view — that student tips alone are insufficient to support a constitutionally permissible strip search. See Phaneuf, 448 F.3d at 598-99 (“While the uncorroborated tip no doubt justified additional inquiry and investigation by school officials, we are not convinced that it justified a step as intrusive as a strip search.”); Williams v. Ellington, 936 F.2d 881, 888 (6th Cir. 1991). To overcome this legal difficulty, the school attempts to additionally justify the search on the basis that (1) Jordan falsely reported that Savana, several months prior, had a party at her home at which alcohol was served; (2) Savana admitted to owning a planner — later discovered to contain cigarettes, lighters, and a knife — that she had given to her friend Marissa.2 The school does not explain how this information sufficiently corroborates and supports a strip search for pills. Indeed, the Second Circuit recently held that violation of a school’s tobacco policy cannot be the basis of a strip search for another drug. Phaneuf, 448 F.3d at 599-600; see also Cornfield, 991 F.2d at 1321
They didn't touch her. You would prefer that they had?
Answer my question.
“Ever hear of the Tenth Amendment?”
Giving state authorities the “right” to eye-hump naked little girls? No I guess I missed that part.
Hey dude this is great!!! 8,485 Viewings of your stupid efforts to justify strip searches by school officials. Keep going. You are helping our cause to bring these jackbooted thugs under the rule of law.
But you were just claiming that they were searching for "Advil" and now you're quoting (from the dissent) to prove your own claim false.
That's an interesting line of "reasoning".
Quote this alleged "law". You and the ACLU hate the law.
Why do you keep arguing an irrelevant point.
They strip searched her. If they touched here, then we would be screaming that these folks do hard time for the remainder of their sorry excuses for lives. But they didn't. We just want them sued, their right, their sacred honor destroyed -- they did that to themselves -- stripped of property and dignity, cause a local outrage because of the waste of taxpayer dollars that could be going to education instead used to pay off lawsuits caused by a bunch of perverted souls who have not clue about proprieties.
No we all got the point. Dude! Now, Dude, go and get a clue!
The 4th ammendment, Dude, which he Arizona constitution acknowledges as being the supreme law of the land, dude. Now go get a clue, dude.
The way you express you fantasies provides insights into your thought process.
BTW, the Bill of Rights isn't the source of state power.
Read a book. (Preferably not an imaginary one.)
f#$&ing Advil is Pills, dude. Go get yourself a f#$&ing clue,Dude.
The Fourth Amendment wasn't applied to the states by judicial legislation until 1949, and then only partially. From the decision:
According to the Court, the search of a student by a public school official is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment if it is both: (1) “justified at its inception,” and (2) “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.” T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341 (citing Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 20 (1968)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Under T.L.O., a search is justified at its inception if there are “reasonable grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.” Id. at 341-42.
Or are you reading from the ACLU "living, breathing" version?
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