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.
Of course not. What sort of society have we become if an uncorroborated accusation can lead directly to a cavity search?
The question was for RP. I pinged you.
Roger that. I'm sure Bob would be totally cool with it, though.
We'll see about RP. I wouldn't. See post 140.
“But if your civil liberties are not safe in the public commons what will protect your civil liberties on your own property? “
The Second Ammendment grants you citizenship...
It is absence a man becomes a Subject to the state.
oops!
IN its absence man becomes a Subject to the state...
Ask any Brit....they’re clearly, by virtue of their gun laws and hypersurveillance of one another, Her Royal Majesty’s Subjects.
“I’d take the assault rap. It would be worth it. “
Ask for a jury trial, I for one would not convict you.
Mindreader!
Why do girls/women generally take advil? Isn’t it frequently for pain caused by their period? So this girl is supposed to be stashing advil in her crotch while she’s on her period and the principal then expects her to consume the advil? I don’t mean to be offensive here but this is amazing.
Not only is this school run by child molesters but its run by stupid socialists. No wonder so many children are failing to graduate from high school.
While I understand YOUR sentiment for not “copping out” on keeping our freedoms in our public squares and institutions, I still don’t want the experiment to fight the system taking place on MY kids. (Hence I homeschool.)
Most schools require a note from the doctor to allow even nonprescription medication. That's beside the point. They still shouldn't search based on uncorroborated accusations.
If people take their kids out of public schools and put them in private school or home school, the public schools will have to shut down. In some states, there are counties that don't have public schools. If people there can't afford private schooling the county gives them a voucher to attend a private school.
Why not? Why not have freedom as opposed to a police state? Why get kids acclimated to gestapo tactics when they should be taught to appreciate the bill of rights? Doesn't freedom mean anything to you? Do you think freedom is some abstract thing that we should do without for the sake of "safety"?
OR spend their alloted dollars on other sorts of Bravo Sierra. I understand the theory, I just don't see it happening in reality any time soon. Perhaps I'm being too myopic, however---I do live in Massachusetts, after all, the bastion of the public school system mentality.
Nope. Boiling oil after a nice tarring and feathering. Low cholesterol oil, of course.
Everyone should be able to deduct from their taxes, up to the amount spent per pupil in public school, the cost of the schooling of their choice.
Then they would have turned up drugs. So what? They were looking for an ADVIL tablet.
You think this is necessary? These kids are going to leave school thinking that strip searches of citizens are perfectly fine. What kind of country do you want America to become?
What a stupid thing to say. We are talking about homosexuals having access to children. Are you telling me that you would have no problem with a homosexual tending to your kid in a locker room or on an overnight camping trip?
But these people will only fail at educating their own kids, not other people's children. Public schools systems have become so corrupt and dysfunctional that most public school teachers fall into the "dimwit' category.
Advil Schmadvil. Leave it out of your argument. It could have been cocaine and you're saying she shouldn't have been searched based on the above. Fine.
I'm simply saying that decision would leave little Miss Drug Dealer in business and open up the school for future lawsuits. (You were told she was dealing drugs and you did nothing? You didn't even search her?)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.