Supreme Court Rules Against School Performing Strip Search For Ibuprofen

In April I noted a case going to the Supreme Court involving the strip searching of a teenage girl at school to search for suspected contraband Ibuprofen. The court ruled today that her rights were violated. The New York Times reports:

In a ruling of interest to educators, parents and students across the country, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights.

The officials in Safford, Ariz., would have been justified in 2003 had they limited their search to the backpack and outer clothing of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade at the time, the court ruled. But in searching her undergarments, they went too far and violated her Fourth Amendment privacy rights, the justices said.

Had Savana been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search, too, might have been justified, the majority said, in an opinion by Justice David H. Souter.

“In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” the court said. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”

In fact, no pills were found on Savana when her underwear was examined by two school officials, both women, who were acting on a tip passed along by another student.

Thursday’s ruling sends the case back to the lower courts to assess what damages, if any, should be paid by the school district. But, by a vote of 7 to 2, the Supreme Court held that the individual officials in the case should not be held liable, because “clearly established law” at the time of the search did not show that it violated the Fourth Amendment.

4 Comments

  1. 1
    Fritz says:

    Wow.  Two rulings this year with some sanity on rules for search.  Amazing.

  2. 2
    Mike b.t.r.m. says:

    Yeah! Good decision by the Supreme Court. I tell you, sometimes I got to show the A.C.L.U. some love, sometimes I hate them but sometimes I got to love them. Now, as to the one dissenting vote Clarence Thomas. His position was that the school is in the role of parent and should have something like a power of a parent when kids are at school. Well here conservative Mike is going to have to part ways with Justice Thomas. Thinking like that is one reason there is no way I’d ever send my kids to public school. I simply have to suppress the thought of them doing that to one of my kids. To dwell on that thought is just too painful.

  3. 3
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  4. 4
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