Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jun 2009
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Referenced: The ruling http://drugsense.org/url/ewgAsKhd
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

A COMMON-SENSE RULING ON STRIP SEARCHES

A Supreme Court Decision Lays Down a Bright Line for School Officials.

Common sense and constitutional law don't always come to the same 
conclusion, but the U.S. Supreme Court has done justice to both in 
ruling that an Arizona middle school violated the 4th Amendment by 
subjecting a 13-year-old girl to a strip search. With only Justice 
Clarence Thomas dissenting, the court has drawn a bright line that 
school officials will transgress at their legal peril. It also has 
nudged other states to join California and six more states that ban 
strip searches of students by school authorities.

Savana Redding was in eighth grade when school officials, suspecting 
that she was concealing prescription-strength ibuprofen, ordered her 
to remove her clothes and stretch out her bra and underpants. The 
search was unconstitutional, Justice David H. Souter wrote for the 
court, for two reasons: The officials lacked reasonable suspicion 
that Savana was hiding drugs in her underwear, and the drugs in 
question, even if she had possessed them, posed no danger to 
students. That double requirement would seem to prohibit strip 
searches except in the rarest of cases -- for example, when officials 
have a good reason to suspect that a student has secreted hard drugs 
or a weapon in her clothes.

In laying down this legal test, Souter displayed an admirable 
awareness that "adolescent vulnerability intensifies the patent 
intrusiveness" of a strip search. He dismissed the notion that what 
Savanna endured was no more traumatic than being observed changing 
clothes before gym. In an interview after oral arguments in the case, 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg worried that her male colleagues might 
not have recognized that 13 is "a very sensitive age for a girl." In 
the end, the male justices "got it" -- but they also recognized that 
it isn't only girls who would feel violated by a full body search. 
The exception was Thomas, who in a previous case made clear that he 
doubts whether schoolchildren of either gender have meaningful 
constitutional rights.

Given the outrageousness of this search, it might seem obvious that 
the court would rule as it did. But, until this decision, the law was 
unclear (which is why the court said the individuals who ordered 
Savana's search couldn't be sued for damages, though the school 
district could still be held liable). Moreover, comments by the 
justices at oral arguments suggested that they were torn. Even Souter 
wrestled with the concern that justice for Savana might prevent 
school administrators in other cases from responding promptly to a 
serious drug-abuse problem.

That won't be a problem if schools follow the guidelines in Souter's 
opinion. Better yet, they would be spared such decisions by laws in 
every state banning strip searches by school officials. If such 
searches are needed to protect schools and students, they should be 
done by police. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake