Pubdate: Mon, 27 Apr 2009
Source: Herald, The (Everett, WA)
Copyright: 2009 The Daily Herald Co.
Contact:  http://www.heraldnet.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/190
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Savana+Redding
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/strip+searches

STRIPPED OF COMMON SENSE

Some Supreme Court justices tipped their collective shaky hand last 
week while hearing arguments regarding the constitutionality of 
strip-searching students as part of schools' drug policies.

The justices' comments indicate they will overturn a 9th Circuit 
Court of Appeals opinion that found an Arizona school's decision to 
strip-search a 13-year-old honor student unconstitutional.

The facts: On Oct. 8, 2003, based on a "tip" from a student who had 
been caught with prescription ibuprofen that Savana Redding was the 
source of the drugs, school officials pulled the eighth-grader out of 
her math class, searched her backpack, and upon finding no 
contraband, ordered her to the nurse's station to be strip searched. 
Redding was forced to pull out her bra and shake it about, the same 
with her underpants, to prove no pills were hidden therein. Which 
they were not.

Our broad-brush "war on drugs" leaves no room for critical or 
sensible thinking. Strip searching for ibuprofen? Strip searching an 
honor student who has never been in trouble based on the word of a 
girl who is in trouble? Strip searching at all? That's just as 
wrong-headed as school drug policies that test students who go out 
for extra-curricular activities.

But the justices weren't concerned with any of that. Writing on 
Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick reports that Justice Stephen Breyer was 
puzzled at how a strip search could harm a child: "... why is this a 
major thing to say strip down to your underclothes, which children do 
when they change for gym?"

An exasperated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lithwick writes, tried to 
explain the difference but Breyer was too busy reminiscing.

"In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we 
did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in 
my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my 
underwear," Breyer said. Then: "Or not my underwear. Whatever. 
Whatever. I was the one who did it? I don't know. I mean, I don't 
think it's beyond human experience."

Justice David Souter said he "would rather have the kid embarrassed 
by a strip search ... than have some other kids dead because the 
stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry."

Justice Antonin Scalia, Lithwick reports, was almost chortling when 
he wondered what happens after "you search the student's outer 
garments, and you have a reasonable suspicion that the student has 
drugs. You've searched everywhere else. By God, the drugs must be in 
her underpants!"

Except, of course, when they are not.

Senior moments do not good Supreme Court decisions make.
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