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.
Thanks.
Obtuse.
From 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.
Perhaps she was lying and the federal judiciary should order local public school to keep federally licensed psychics on staff. A new cause for the ACLU.
Obscure.
There is a big difference between Federalism, Dude, and the Right of the State to trample on the individual rights of its citizens. Let us read the 10th ammendment in its entirety, Dude. It states:
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. --- The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Dude, whether or not you believe federalism trumps the 4th amendment, it is the people of the state of Arizona who incorporated the constitution (with the bill of rights) into their constitution as the supreme law of the land.
We needn't debate whether the 4th amendment trumps states rights, here, though, under the 14th amendment, it does, no one has called that into question, since the State of Arizona adopted it as part of THEIR constitution, of the free will of the state of Arizona.
Leftists hate the Founding Fathers and the principles of federalism.
But I love the founding fathers and the constitution including its constraints on the powers of the Federal government and the states. I am not a centralist because I believe that the Constitution constrains the power of the States as well as the Federal Government.
Since when does states rights include the right to tyranny?
So you and the ACLU want federal power extended to local public schools. Got it.
They're your fantasies, not mine.
I thought at first you had a point to make, but it’s obvious you are just here to play word games. Have fun!
Standard ACLU mantra. The federal government defines all rights and regulates all levels of government.
I never thought you did. You didn't disappoint me.
You just can't come up with the coercive act. But you feel sure that it must be there. And feelings are all that matter on the left.
From the actual decision;
“Wilson then showed Redding the pills he had seized from
Marissa and asked her what she could tell him about them.
After Redding denied having knowledge of the pills, Wilson
told Redding that he had received a report that she had been
passing the pills out to her classmates and asked Redding if
she would object to being searched. Redding denied bringing
pills to school, denied distributing pills to her classmates, and
12860 REDDING v. SAFFORD USD #1
told Wilson that she did not mind being searched. Wilson then
invited Romero into his office, and together, they conducted
a search of Redding’s backpack. After the search proved fruitless,
Wilson asked Romero to take Redding into the nurse’s
office and conduct a search of her person. Romero complied.
Romero took Redding into the nurse’s office and again
invited Schwallier to observe. At the time of the search, Redding
was wearing “stretch pants without pockets and a T-shirt
without pockets.” In Schwallier’s presence, Romero asked
Redding to: (1) remove her jacket, shoes, and socks, (2)
remove her pants and shirt, (3) pull her bra out and to the side
and shake it, exposing her breasts, and (4) pull her underwear
out at the crotch and shake it, exposing her pelvic area. The
search did not produce any pills. Immediately after it had concluded,
Defendants returned Redding’s clothes and allowed
her to get dressed. At no point during the search did either
Schwallier or Romero touch Redding. ***Prior to the search, no attempt was made to contact Redding’s mother.***
(*** = My favorite part)
Just to avoid further misrepresentation on your part, the rest of us are talking about the poor kid that got eye-raped, not the one that was acutally caught with drugs on her. To anyone reading this not named Mojave, the little statist has been trying to pass off the minor child agreeing to be “searched” as her consent to being eye-humped by the school authorities. He does not debate honestly and please do not waste your time.
Sincerely,
What magazine did that quote come from?
Your line of argumentation seems to be that any right the ACLU seeks to protect is a right we should no longer have. This is a strange kind of ad hominem, but ok.
What we want, however, is the 4th ammendment constraints on state power to be observed.
Your fantasies are getting a little more feverish with every post.
It's kinda creepy.
Your champions have a history.
Definition Coerce - to cause to do through pressure or necessity, by physical, moral or intellectual means.
She was coerced. Dude.
Since your argument is based on splitting hairs and quibbling over meanings, let us look at the dictionary defintion of ask:
Defintion ask 6. To expect or demand
They demanded, compliance with which was reinforced through the awesome powers of the state, i.e. she was compelled or forced.
Of course I'm sure it's there. She was afraid of getting in trouble if she refused. That her own statement. She had reason to believe that she would be in trouble if she refused as the principal is a school authority figure, and the people who did the search were employees and acting as agents of the principal and the school.
Hell, I can not even believe you are trying to argue that this was a consensual search. Even the 9th circuit's decision (which was wrong) doesn't go that far.
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