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The School Crotch Inspector - Fighting the Advil menace, one strip search at a time
Reason ^ | April 2, 2008 | Jacob Sullum

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.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Crime/Corruption; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: advil; arth; ashredux; authoritarianism; healthnazis; homeschoolingisgood; nannystate; publicschool; schooldiscipline; stripsearch; teens; twoequalsthree; wod; wodlist; zot
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To: 50mm

I would much rather argue the thesis, behind his back, that mojave is an intellectually dishonest morally bankrupt enabler of authoritarian miscreants than have to keep rehashing the poor tired old facts of this case, which no one called into question.


621 posted on 04/05/2008 10:34:12 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: 50mm
I’m going to take a wild stab here, but the two judges on the wrong side are ‘rats and the one heroic judge is a conservative.

Interesting. I am going to go check it out. Get back to you.

622 posted on 04/05/2008 10:35:03 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson
I would much rather argue the thesis, behind his back, that mojave is an intellectually dishonest morally bankrupt enabler of authoritarian miscreants than have to keep rehashing the poor tired old facts of this case, which no one called into question.

I agree that endlessly re-stating the solid moral and ethical principles behind the right point of view here can be tiresome. We're talking a severe beating of the horse that died yesterday and whose carcass is now putrifying the air with the stench of authoritarianism.

623 posted on 04/05/2008 10:46:38 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: AndyJackson
Majority:

Richard R. Clifton - Bush - wrote the majority opinion. OTOH he is an A.B. at Princeton University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Michael Daly Hawkins - Clinton - concurred

Sidney R. Thomas - Clinton - our hero on the side of individual rights.

624 posted on 04/05/2008 10:48:00 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: 50mm; AndyJackson

I like this post and response. I’m going to add it to my profile page.


625 posted on 04/05/2008 10:49:42 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: AndyJackson

Whoa! I’m shocked!


626 posted on 04/05/2008 10:51:18 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: 50mm

Well, I guess we have to express our disappointment in yet another GWB appointee. I am not shocked, but am awfully disappointed at the litany of poor performance we are seeing out of his uninspired choices almost everywhere. We should bear in mind that we had to go through Miers to get to Robertson and Alito. I guess there was enough vigilance there that Bush’s efforts to ram through another 2nd rater failed, and he knew it. On the lower courts obviously there is less scrutiny.


627 posted on 04/05/2008 10:52:32 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson

We shouldn’t forget, Bush I and his Souter anti-property rights pick. Must be genetic.


628 posted on 04/05/2008 10:56:53 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: AndyJackson

Maybe Clifton and Hawkins like little girls?


629 posted on 04/05/2008 10:58:28 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: 50mm
Bill Bennett pretty much said it all:


630 posted on 04/05/2008 11:03:26 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson; Mojave; robertpaulsen

Great book. Maybe Mojave, Bobby, Clifton and Hawkins should read it.


631 posted on 04/05/2008 11:05:40 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: 50mm
We shouldn’t forget, Bush I and his Souter anti-property rights pick. Must be genetic..

I think it is much more cynical than that. Politics is about making trades, and the Bushes have been too willing to trade the judiciary for things that THEY believe are important. After all, as they are wealthy and can afford the best and most connected attorneys around, so the efficient administration of justice does not affect them. Well, I think that the issues of justice here for the average person and observation of civil rights here for the average person will turn out to have been far more consequential in the long view of Bushes presidency that is atrociously conducted war in Iraq until they got all the neo-con Harriet Miers lookalikes out of positions of influence and got a real counterinsurgency strategy under Petraeus. That was not a deliberate strategy of this administration, but a last act of desperation, sadly.

It is what happens when you have someone who operates on the principal of convenience rather than conviction, heads to Clinton's tails (pun intended).

632 posted on 04/05/2008 11:10:58 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: beltfed308
Big time bump! RP's statist position in this thread is not surprising at all.

Not in the least. He is a slimy little man who twists logic like pretzels in order to support the fascist outcomes he prefers.

633 posted on 04/05/2008 11:15:31 AM PDT by TigersEye (Beijing 2008 - Berlin 1936. Olympics staged for murdering tyrant regimes.)
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To: AndyJackson
...the poor tired old facts of this case, which no one called into question.

Great post in its entirety and well summed up. The statist mindset cannot grasp moral distinctions in an argument. The only thing that matters is the letter of the law and only then when it supports a supremacy of authority over principle. It is the sociopathic mind wedded to power constructs. Nothing matters but the power construct. Not morality, not ethics, not principles and not even the law itself when it obstructs the projection of authoritarian power. Hillary is a lot like that but even she isn't quite this sick.

634 posted on 04/05/2008 11:29:52 AM PDT by TigersEye (Beijing 2008 - Berlin 1936. Olympics staged for murdering tyrant regimes.)
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To: TigersEye
We are up to 5,967 viewings of this thread. I hope RP and Mojave are proud of the service they have performed in the important cause of protecting our civil liberties.

I cannot think of a better case to demonstrate the moral bankruptcy of the pro-statist authoritarians. This is not the case where they should have made their stand, because the entire proposition that there is anything to be said FOR this search is just plain silly, and giving this publicity will, one hopes, encourage the full panel to understand the full moral and constitutional implications of what they are about to decide.

Our founding fathers knew exactly what they were doing in constraining the powers of the state to conduct searches. This case is only an exclamation point at the end of their excellent work.

The one person we should take pause to feel sympathy for is Ms Redding. It must be mortifying for a young girl to get this kind of publicity about this sort of thing, and the willingness of herself and her family to endure this kind of scrutiny into their affairs deserves our gratitude.

635 posted on 04/05/2008 11:32:29 AM PDT by AndyJackson
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To: AndyJackson
Politics is about making trades, and the Bushes have been too willing to trade the judiciary for things that THEY believe are important.

Like minds.

It is a rare silver-spoon patrician who can understand the point of view of the average Joe six-pack. That's why even with a Republican-controlled congress, spending by the Feds continued to skyrocket and not a serious thought was given to dumping the AMT tax trap set to gobble up the entire middle class in a few years. There are very few Joe six-packs in congress.

636 posted on 04/05/2008 11:33:07 AM PDT by 50mm (I love the smell of napalm in the morning....It smells like victory!)
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To: Grunthor
You truly believe that a judge

What judge? You didn't read the decision, did you?

637 posted on 04/05/2008 11:48:29 AM PDT by Mojave
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To: 50mm
The decision was wrong

Nope, you're wrong.

638 posted on 04/05/2008 11:49:09 AM PDT by Mojave
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To: AndyJackson
there are more facts than just these facts.

Still waiting for 'em.

[crickets]

639 posted on 04/05/2008 11:50:48 AM PDT by Mojave
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To: Mojave

“What judge? You didn’t read the decision, did you?”

I did and I am NOT TALKING ABOUT THE DECISION, rather I am talking about RIGHT and this little thing that you might want to look into called, “WRONG.”


640 posted on 04/05/2008 11:51:59 AM PDT by Grunthor (http://constitutionparty.com/join.php)
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