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'm not defending your personal fantasies.
I am not distancing myself from anything you moral pipsqueek, which I just asserted, except you are such a mental midget you do not have a clue what I am saying, and you are making a laughing stock of yourself in trying to act like you have command of this argument. I am very much standing by my arguments.
You need to look up the logical fallacy which you committed, and look up what a positive vs a normative argument is and after a few years of thinking hard and examining your poor decrepit soul you can get back to us and try again.
Now, stand up like a man, look your fellow freepers in the eye, state the facts upon which you are relying, and argue the point you are trying to make.
Coward. Absolute coward.
LOL
What you are not defending is your own dignity and reputation.
Weasel. Come out and argue like a man. Coward.
Again, I'm not defending your personal fantasies.
Well now we understand Mojave's level of articulateness in defense of his decency and manhood.
What you are not defending is your own point. You have none, except a bunch of irrelevant ad hominems. Coward.
The search of Redding’s person was conducted by public school officials and took place during school hours and on school premises. The validity of the search is, therefore, governed by New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 (1985). In that case, the Supreme Court held that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures extended to searches of students by public school officials and set forth the constitutional standard for adjudging the “reasonableness” of such searches. See id. at 333-37, 341-43; see also Bd. of Educ. v. Earls, 536 U.S. 822, 828 (2002) (“We must . . . review the School District’s [search policy] for ‘reasonableness,’ which is the touchstone of the constitutionality of a governmental search.”). 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 12862 REDDING v. SAFFORD USD #1 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.
Fraidy cat.
Make one, coward. Just one. Scaredy cat. Come out a play, our precious little kitty bait.
My point that your "child molestation" charges were false and baseless? Look again. I've been pummeling with the facts; you've responded with hysterical ad hominem screeching.
Which you're incapable of addressing.
Based on the information available to them, Defendants had “reasonable grounds” for suspecting that the search of Redding’s person would turn up evidence that Redding had “violated or [was] violating either the law or the rules of the school.” See T.L.O., 469 U.S. at 341-43. At the time Defendants searched Redding, they had several key pieces of information tying her to the possession and distribution of pills in violation of school policy.
[crickets]
They are not baseless. I am relying upon the facts stated in the court brief that a minor girl was stripped and was searched by employees of the school, acting under color of authority, in search of Advil.
That is my base for the charge. I think that most folks around here also believe that the actions of these school officials are beyond the pale according to the norms of behavior established by the members of our society.
The real argument that you are trying to make is that the actions of these school officials are proper within the norms of our society, and that is the point that is being argued in this thread. I admit I am putting words in your mouth, which I am forced to do because you won't utter your own words you coward,
It would be helpful if would act like a straightforward, decent and honest gentleman and make your own arguments in defense of the disgusting actions of these state official.
But you are a coward and won't argue your own point.
The facts are plain - the school administrators and their shameless apologist “Mojave” deserve public horse-whippings.
They lack all decency, being depraved bootlickers. We should expect no better of suchlike, I suppose, but still...
THAT is what is being debated, since you missed it.
WHAT we are arguing about, more broadly, is whether the powers of the state are constrained when the actions amount to what most of us here regard as no more than child molestation in the name of an absurd zero tolerance policy. Well, their "zero tolerance" policy just collided with our "zero tolerance" policy and did so in a time, manner and place that all you statist authoritarians ought to find just a bit embarassing for your cause.
But keep making it. You are making lots of friends.
And, Coward, instead of cutting and pasting other people's arguments, stand up, like a man, and tell us YOUR opinion, and YOUR argument in support.
Once again, get a spine, stand up on your own two feet, and make your own argument. It will be wrong, because there is no right on your side, but we learn through error if you have the courage to commit such, which you don't.
[crickets] - how where did we hear that before.
[crickets]
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