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.
Very well stated once again. I agree entirely. I applaud the young woman, and she is a young woman now having had the child’s view of privacy and security stripped from her, and her parents for their courage in fighting for what’s right. They could have chosen to let it go in order to keep this incident from becoming more widely known and let it slip into a bad but fading memory. Freedom is not free and the price paid is not always blood and the warriors who pay the price are not always stout young men trained for battle. And it shouldn’t be and it can’t be because not all freedoms can be secured that way.
Clinton and his leftwing judicial appointment are your heros?
Figures.
You haven't read it.
You have strange beliefs about what a man is. Among other things.
Not for those who are willing to pick and choose facts and act like a smug jackass about it.
Well, we can debate what a man is. I use your fine instance as an example for all to behold of what a man is not.
No we don't. We're right about it.
Yes we all read the decision. You just click on the link and there it is for anyone to read who can read. Clearly you can't read any better than you can think.
I posted 611.
Take a few deep breaths.
Don’t be a sore loser.
It's kitty bait. Sooner or later I am going to incite this moral deficient example of whithered manhood into springing on it. Anyone who thinks a strip search of a teenage girl for Advil is appropriate lacks the sense of discrimination, self-control and sense of self-preservation required to keep himself alive. It is merely a matter of time.
I don't believe you.
I meant 617, but clearly you didn't read it.
Even as a troll, you failed.
Next you’ll be taken to task for spelling errors. The pettiness of a sociopathic statist is unlimited. Somewhere there is a cosmic chalkboard where he gets another 1/10,000th of a point. For what exactly no sane person could tell you.
Where you begged the meaning of "force".
You're too easy.
Lose what? You have yet to make an argument about anything. What is YOUR position. Not your position on my position, or your position on someone else's position. We want to know YOUR position.
As a start, can we agree with the definition of "strip," i.e.
1. To remove clothing or covering from. 2. To deprive of (clothing or covering)
If you agree with that definition then can you assert which of the following facts you disagree with:
I begged nothing. I cited the dictionary definition of force, which comports with the acts of the officials who forced her to strip so they could search her. The court did not state that she volunteered to remove her clothing, but rather an official of the school directed that she be searched and that she strip in aid of said search.
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