Personally, I think you don't surrender your constitutional rights when you enter a school
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Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy


March 24, 2009
By ADAM LIPTAK

SAFFORD, Ariz. — Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.

The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.

In Ms. Redding’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”

“More than that,” Judge Wardlaw added, “it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

Judge Michael Daly Hawkins, dissenting, said the case was in some ways “a close call,” given the “humiliation and degradation” involved. But, Judge Hawkins concluded, “I do not think it was unreasonable for school officials, acting in good faith, to conduct the search in an effort to obviate a potential threat to the health and safety of their students.”

Richard Arum, who teaches sociology and education at New York University, said he would have handled the incident differently. But Professor Arum said the Supreme Court should proceed cautiously.

“Do we really want to encourage cases,” Professor Arum asked, “where students and parents are seeking monetary damages against educators in such school-specific matters where reasonable people can disagree about what is appropriate under the circumstances?”

The Supreme Court’s last major decision on school searches based on individual suspicion — as opposed to systematic drug testing programs — was in 1985, when it allowed school officials to search a student’s purse without a warrant or probable cause as long their suspicions were reasonable. It did not address intimate searches.

In a friend-of-the-court brief in Ms. Redding’s case, the federal government said the search of her was unreasonable because officials had no reason to believe she was “carrying the pills inside her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal.”

The government added, though, that the scope of the 1985 case was not well established at the time of the 2003 search, so the assistant principal should not be subject to a lawsuit.

Sitting in her aunt’s house in this bedraggled mining town a two-hour drive northeast of Tucson, Ms. Redding, now 19, described the middle-school cliques and jealousies that she said had led to the search. “There are preppy kids, gothic kids, nerdy types,” she said. “I was in between nerdy and preppy.”

One of her friends since early childhood had moved in another direction. “She started acting weird and wearing black,” Ms. Redding said. “She started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy.”

When the friend was found with ibuprofen pills, she blamed Ms. Redding, according to court papers.

Kerry Wilson, the assistant principal, ordered the two school employees to search both students. The searches turned up no more pills.

Mr. Wilson declined a request for an interview and referred a reporter to the superintendent of schools, Mark R. Tregaskes. Mr. Tregaskes did not respond to a message left with his assistant.

Lawyers for the school district said in a brief that it was “on the front lines of a decades-long struggle against drug abuse among students.” Abuse of prescription and over-the-counter medications is on the rise among 12- and 13-year-olds, the brief said, citing data from the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Given that, the school district said, the search was “not excessively intrusive in light of Redding’s age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.”

Adam B. Wolf, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Ms. Redding, said her experience was “the worst nightmare for any parent.”

“When you send your child off to school every day, you expect them to be in math class or in the choir,” Mr. Wolf said. “You never imagine their being forced to strip naked and expose their genitalia and breasts to their school officials.”

In a sworn statement submitted in the case, Safford Unified School District v. Redding, No. 08-479, Mr. Wilson said he had good reason to suspect Ms. Redding. She and other students had been unusually rowdy at a school dance a couple of months before, and members of the school staff thought they had smelled alcohol. A student also accused Ms. Redding of having served alcohol at a party before the dance, Mr. Wilson said.

Ms. Redding said she had served only soda at the party, adding that her accuser was not there. At the dance, she said, school administrators had confused adolescent rambunctiousness with inebriation. “We’re kids,” she said. “We’re goofy.”

The search was conducted by Peggy Schwallier, the school nurse, and Helen Romero, a secretary. Ms. Redding “never appeared apprehensive or embarrassed,” Ms. Schwallier said in a sworn statement. Ms. Redding said she had kept her head down so the women could not see that she was about to cry.

Ms. Redding said she was never asked if she had pills with her before she was searched. Mr. Wolf, her lawyer, said that was unsurprising.

“They strip-search first and ask questions later,” Mr. Wolf said of school officials here.

Ms. Redding did not return to school for months after the search, studying at home. “I never wanted to see the secretary or the nurse ever again,” she said.

In the end, she transferred to another school. The experience left her wary, nervous and distrustful, she said, and she developed stomach ulcers. She is now studying psychology at Eastern Arizona College and hopes to become a counselor.

Ms. Redding said school officials should have taken her background into account before searching her.

“They didn’t even look at my records,” she said. “They didn’t even know I was a good kid.”

The school district does not contest that Ms. Redding had no disciplinary record, but says that is irrelevant.

“Her assertion should not be misread to infer that she never broke school rules,” the district said of Ms. Redding in a brief, “only that she was never caught.”

Ms. Redding grew emotional as she reflected on what she would have done if she had been told as an adult to strip-search a student. Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she said she would have refused.

“Why would I want to do that to a little girl and ruin her life like that?” Ms. Redding asked.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
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WOD, FTW.

What a fucking tragedy.

Yaaaaay, "War On Drugs" !!!

Not only is it costing lives, now it's gonna cost a couple of million bucks.

Yaaaaay!!!!

I hope this costs the state more that " a couple of million bucks".  I think a 9 digit number will keep them from ever making that mistake again.  The Government only seems to change when it costs money not to.

when i was in middle school we were searched with drug dogs like prisoners.

two school administrators, the school resource officer, and the police dog handler burst into the room in the middle of class.

we were forced to line up shoulder to shoulder while they ran the dog up and down the line.


then in highschool sitting in studyhall.

two administrators and the recource officer bursts into the room yelling hands up! like a stick up!

they took metal detectors over us and our bags and searched our bags.



its a good way to start indoctrinating young people to give up their rights and give in to being searched.

i thought it was always ironic how we were taught about the constitution and the bill of rights and the 4th amendment, yet in school i am subjected to warrantless searches like a convict in prison. they claim "in loco parentis"

Zero tolerance = zero thought.  Sounds like the school administration would do it all again if given the chance.  I detect no remorse from any of them given the quotes in that article.



If they strip search my daughter, the newspaper won't be writing about little girls and attorneys.  My school district's superintendent is my wife's first cousin.  I know where he lives.

Pics?

That's some serious NAZI BS, right there.

Not with the Obama situation. We are spending money we don't have currently.

When I was in high school, you took aspirin if you had a headache. If a teacher saw you, they might ask to borrow some.

This nation's agitated pussies have effectively ruined common sense and reason.

Strip search over a fucking ibuprophin, based on the claims of another person caught with them? Unfuckingreal.

Everyone involved in strip-searching a 13 year old girl needs to be doing 20-life in GP with "pedophile"tattooed on their forehead.

unfortunately it happens all the time, all across the country.

One of he reasons I posted this story is because I volunteer to help at the local high school, and most of those kids are just kids, they still watch Sat morning cartoons. To have someone burst in on you line you up against the wall and having a drug sniffing dog sniff is pretty traumatizing. I know we have serious drug problems in high schools, but just random searches without any proof or unsubstantiated proof is really crazy.

I don't think that the Penitentiary will take dead bodies.



 

I remember reading about this fucking travesty on here when it first happened.


The school cross the line and needs to pay.

A small amount of common sense would have prevented this.  Alas, the school administration is obviously brain dead.

I've already told my 2 girls and 2 step girls to refuse to do this and we would deal with the consequences later.

I thought the 1985 searching of a student's purse without a warrant or probable cause was terrible....... the above is outrageous.  

by the time this over  i thinks she will be depositing a few hundred million into a bunch of bank accounts.... i hope she wins BIG

Guilty until proven innocent.

Wow, its changed quite a bit over the past 20 years,  when I was in HS, more then a couple teachers got the everloving shit kicked out of them by student's they 'pushed' their luck with like that.  And exactly how does someone fucking abuse Ibuprofen?   God forbid that was my daughter, those two women would have both their hands broken, teeth knocked out, and a shotgun-barrel 'search' performed.

Where has our common sense gone? Really...stripped searched over a "precription strenght" ibupro....it's not like they saw her hittin the crack pipe or popin oxy or something, they though she had an otc muscle relaxer!!! That is some BS right there. Hell in my day we carried our RX bottles with us, and if and/or when we needed to take medication, we asked the teacher and were granted leave to go to the water fountain...what have we become.

A request to have a minor remove their clothes should be preceded by a call for the parents to be there, period.

If the parents happen to bring a lawyer along, then you call the cops and go from there.  Forcing a 13 year old to strip and expose her genitals and breasts is an abomination.

They can do that, but they won't allow corporal punishment?  Stupid fucks.

That's disgusting. I hope she gets justice.

Agreed, now I know that what they did was not the text book definition of rape, but those assholes sure as hell raped that girl. They should be publicly humiliated and locked up.

If this what not in school it would be child molestation.

The strip searchers would have made excellent nazi guards. "I vas joost followink zee ordres of herr principal!"

Even as recently as 15 years ago, I always carried my Swiss Army knife to school.  Try doing that now, even as a visitor or teacher.  

So let me get this straight.

All of this over... ibuprofen.  Not pot.  Not coke.  Not heroin.  Not meth.

Ibuprofen.

And there wasn't just one school employee involved.  There were three.  At no point did any of these three adults think strip-searching a 13 year-old girl for ibuprofen was a bad idea.

I hope this school district gets screwed, because this story is insane.

God help the adult that coerces my children into disrobing.

....but it was "prescription strength".

Would it be okay if it was over pot, coke, heroin, or meth?





 

Find me a reasonable person who thinks it should be acceptable to strip search 13 year old girls over an ibuprofen.

Yup. What bugs me the most about this shit is not the "war on drugs" bullshit itself but rather the implications for future generations.
There will be literally entire generations of people who were brought up treated essentially like prisoners living in a police state. They will have gotten used to the idea of living like that. When they turn 18? so what? They will still think its normal and not put up any objections. During prohibition we lost a LOT of rights most of which we never got back, but at least it only lasted 13 years, how many right will we have lost after 100 years of this??

But at least we got to take a stand against the Advil mafia.

I noticed that line too.  I must be unreasonable.




 

IBDADTWOD

ETA: That is, In Before Dave A Defends The War On Drugs

The failure called "War on Drugs" makes home schooling look better.



+1

If that's the "standard" these shitheads want to go by, what's to stop someone from saying they robbed a bank and simply haven't been caught?  Lack of felony convictions would be irrelevant too!

No but at least the drug, would have had more "potential for social harm" and "detriment to the overall wellbeing of the other students" attached to it, that may explain the extremely piss poor and unacceptable actions of the adults involved!

recently, a teacher in Houston was suspended because drug dogs doing a random search in the parking lot found a (as in 1) cholesterol pill in her car...

Please make it stop.



 

Personally I hope it does NOT cost the state a dime - but should come out of the pockets of the personal pockets of the administration that set the policy - they they would actually feel the hurt.

Why the fuck do people put up with this shit? Take your kids OUT OF PUBLIC SCHOOL.

NO kid, NO money, no money and the bullshit stops!

They teach them bullshit anyway for the most part. Mostly they teach them to be good little cogs in the corporate machine, it's not education in a classical sense in any way, shape or form.

What is more important to you than your kids? Wake the hell up and GTFO!