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.
Pathetic.
No one around here is dishonest except you.
Locker searches, bag searches, personal searches. All decided ad hoc by the ACLU and federal judges, with local law and regulation voided.
Hard left.
There is a limit to how far school officials can act in loco parentis when the real parents are in loco and no Court has made the school a ward of the child.
Together with the razors, knives and other drugs found.
That limit being set by municipal law and regulation. Until you and ACLU demand that the federal courts manage the schools ad hoc.
I don't desire to impose a single standard on everyone in place of their local laws. That's your dream.
This isn't bringing the feds involved in anything that they don't already have jurisdiction.
First the ACLU remains a red herring. The ACLU decides nothing. It is the Courts that decide.
Locker searches, bag searhces, personal searches,.... strip searches h[you keep leaving it, quite tellingly to your sick filthy mind] have increasing levels of intrusion and the Court standards require increasing levels of scrutiny as a consequence.
Local regulations are completely irrelevant as the power of regulation exists only to the extent that such regulations have been enabled by statute. No statute can empower a regulation to violate the 4th ammendment.
And you keep missing the point. The Constitution of the State of Arizona already conceded the limitations on the power of the State of Arizona prescribed by the Bill of Rights, even if there were no other substantive argument for applying those rights to constrain the powers of the State of Arizona, and its duly created local governments.
The statist needs a court opinion to decide right from wrong. Pure sophistry is all it is.
At the behest of the ACLU.
sick filthy mind
All the sick fantasies posted have been by you and your comrades.
You want the issue decided by the federal courts, not I.
Learn to read. Myself and others have asked for YOUR opinion on whether the strip search was justified. Answer that first!
And the court noted that the USSC used the following standard:
At the same time, the Supreme Court has admonished us that “the constitutional rights of students in public school are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings” and that “the rights of students must be applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment.” See id. (citing Bethel Sch. Dist. No. 403 v. Fraser, 478 U.S. 675, 682 (1986); Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260, 266 (1988)) (internal quotation marks omitted).
The judicial modification of the 4th Amendment hasn't reached far enough to support your desire for complete centralized power. You and the ACLU have a ways to go yet.
That limit being set by the constitution of the State of Arizona, which adopted the US Constitution as the Supreme law of the land, thereby incorporating the 4th amendment and its interpretation by the courts as the supreme law of the state of Arizona.
The counties and municipalities only have such powers as are granted to them by the legislature of the State of Arizona in enabling legislation, and one power they cannot grant is the power to violate the 4th amendment as interpreted by the Courts.
Your argument is with the founding fathers of the State of Arizona and the adjustments they made in drafting the state constitution, since it is they who conceded what you are trying to maintain.
IOW there is no right of the local school officials in the State of Arizona to draft regulations to violate the 4th amendment of the US constitution.
Not my call. But then, I don't share your desire to impose your personal opinions on everyone in the country.
What a cop out! No opinion other than what the court says. Your a pathetic troll.
You're confused. The 14th Amendment applies to Arizona regardless of the Arizona Constitution (1910).
The incorporation of the 4th through the 14th was a judicial action which occured in 1949.
On matters of individual liberties and constraints on the power of the executive, federal state and local, I do what a single standard in place of local laws that attempt to constrain those rights and liberties or expand those powers. You bet I do.
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