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've been busy demolishing your assertions and conclusions.
She said how she felt and what the thought might happen. Her sworn statement includes no threats of such things happening.
Feel free to produce any such threats. But please, quote and source. Don't just invent and assert.
I've never met you. I certainly don't live with you.
If you have evidence to the contrary, go ahead and post it. There's a first time for everything.
Could you put that in English, please?
Glad I was able to teach ya some [weak] manners.
Why do you ask?
It wasn't unanimous. The dissent was by a Clinton appointee.
Was there enough for a pocket search? Under precident, yes. Strip search? nope.
Could you provide the cite?
[crickets]
Try sticking to the facts published in the decision, not personal fantasies.
RP has been in favor of gun control, strip searches of children, and police abuses for as long as I’ve known who he is/was. I’ve gotten into it with him a couple of times, including one where he threatened to “bitch slap” me. I told him to try it, but to have his affairs in order first, and he posted on several threads that I had made a “death threat” against him. I hope he’s gone for good.
Wilson did not order the search of Redding’s person based solely on an uncorroborated tip...After Wilson discovered pills, Marissa immediately attributed them to Redding. Even then, Wilson still refrained from immediately conducting a search of Redding’s person. To the contrary, he questioned Redding about her knowledge of the pills and her ownership of the black planner. It was only after Redding had acknowledged ownership of the planner, acknowledged her friendship with Marissa, and conceded that she had, in fact, lent her planner to Marissa with the express purpose of helping Marissa hide contraband from her parents, that Wilson proceeded to order the challenged search.
But you're not about to let facts confuse you.
Your personal fantasies seem to include strip-searching little girls. Do you dream of being an elementary-school principal, or are you one already?
He was on here for 6 years and that’s 6 too many. He should’ve been zotted on first sight.
Backwards. She wasn't stripped, save in the fantasies of some other posters on the thread.
Do you dream of being an elementary-school principal
Not that I recall.
I got a couple of PMs from people who enjoyed RP for his entertainment value, and enjoyed baiting him. I never saw any “value” of any sort. He was just another police-statist who thought he was clever and smart.
He was a big zero, same as his IQ.
Got that right. The guy was entertaining for a few posts, but his nonsensical arguments grew tedious.
The question of the day, which as yet has received no answer, neither have any of the other questions he has been asked.
All he ever does is project and accuse people of being perverts. He's got to realize that most people are not like him.
Hey, Metmom, do you smell that funny odor gain?
TLO, the binding original case were all school cases are precident are over, was a case of smoking in the girls room. The purse was searched for smokes. There was no strip search for more smokes. In TLO, the parents were also called after the container search.
We join the majority of courts that have examined this issue FN6 in concluding that the accommodation of the privacy interests of schoolchildren with the substantial need of teachers and administrators for freedom to maintain order in the schools does not require strict adherence to the requirement that searches be based on probable cause to believe that the subject of the search has violated or is violating the law. Rather, the legality of a search of a student should depend simply on the reasonableness, under all the circumstances, of the search. Determining the reasonableness of any search involves a twofold inquiry: first, one must consider “whether **743 the ... action was justified at its inception,” Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S., at 20, 88 S.Ct., at 1879; second, one must determine whether the search as actually conducted “was reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place,” ibid. Under ordinary circumstances, a search of a student by a teacher or other school official FN7 will be *342 “justified at its inception” when 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.FN8 Such a search will be permissible in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.FN9 (Emphasis mine)
At the same time, the reasonableness standard should ensure that the interests of students will be invaded no more than is necessary to achieve the legitimate end of preserving order in the schools.
A strip search was necessary for ADVIL? As they said on the Home Improvement show, I don't think so, Tim.
Your witness, Counselor.
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