Posted on 06/25/2009 10:41:17 AM PDT by Darren McCarty
The US Supreme Court has ruled that school staff broke the law when they ordered a 13-year-old girl to strip while searching her for painkillers.
The Arizona school, which bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs, suspected Savana Redding, then 13, of carrying ibuprofen.
After no drugs were found in her bag, she had to remove her clothing, and then move her bra and underwear.
However, the court said individuals could not be held liable in a lawsuit.
The school principal acted on a tip-off from another student that Savana was carrying ibuprofen.
Justice David Souter said: "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,"
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
Thomas dissented, which amazed me a bit. Souter wrote the decision. I wish it went a little further than this, but with the state of the 4th Amendment these days and how the rights of our children end at the schoolhouse walls, I'll take what I can get.
Thomas was the dissenter??
Didn’t see that coming, usually when it’s 8-1 it’s Ginsburg that stands alone.
It amazes me a school board would have a policy permitting this. Seems there is not a lot of common sense on most school boards
The school can’t be held liable?? So if my daughter makes a mistake and hides advil or whatever she could be strip searched? Geez, at least they give her free condoms.
Damn!
LOL!!! Post of the day!
Bill Clinton is deeply saddened.
She should have just refused. Demand to be locked up and monitored until parents come... then deal with it.
I think sometimes Thomas and Scalia take turns playing the “you have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide” game.
They are very, very good SC justices, but sometimes, I wonder what they are thinking about when they vote like this.
Seems like an awful overreaction by the school. Not sure why they would feel the need to ban NSAIDs.
Thomas needs his head examined. If this wasn’t an “unreasonable search”, then nothing is, and we should all have a right to march into Thomas’ office and strip-search him. He must be on drugs if he’s saying this wasn’t an “unreasonable search”, so we have probable cause to suspect he’s in possession of drugs that are dangerous to the nation and our Constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms when being used by a Supreme Court justice. Right?
Should have ruled that the parents could sue the underware off the principal.
Technically, the majority opinion was 6-3. Thomas dissented entirely, claiming the search was legal. Two other judges said the search was illegal AND the administrators should be held liable for their actions. Six judges said both the search was illegal, but the administrators should NOT be liable.
Guess they're of the protected class. Government employees. Wonder why they didn't taze her while they were at it.
Not in the future — the reason the majority said they shouldn’t be held liable was that the principle that this was illegal wasn’t clear until this ruling.
After this ruling, I think it should be clear what is illegal, and in the future they can be held liable.
These schools have a "Zero" tolerance policy which means NO PILLS! Even Barney vitamins would be banned. Of course you can get birth control pills from the nurse, and or condoms without parental consent. If it's too late, you can go to the principle and get an abortion without telling anybody. But leave your aspirin at home to fight drugs at school.
Possibly, but I would be much happier if the schools were teaching common sense to the students rather than having to have the students make a federal case out of the idiot decisions of their teachers and principles..
Strange I posted this same thread hours ago and it got yanked I think???
Also, the individuals who actually carried out the search obviously had the support of their superiors, as evidenced by the fact that the school district pursued this in the courts, arguing that it had a legal right to do this. The school district employees who carried out the search were, to use a cliche, “just following orders”, and relying on their superiors in the school district to have determined the legality of school district policies and procedures. I’d have had a lot more respect for them if they’d had the good sense to “just say no” to doing something so blatantly idiotic and harmful, but they and their families shouldn’t be financially wiped out for it. The school district, on the other hand, SHOULD be financially wiped out — yes, the taxpayers will end up footing the bill, but perhaps this will help the taxpayers/voters to remember to be more careful in the future, about putting complete whackjobs in charge of their school district.
All agreed on the unconstitutionality except Thomas (although it was a partial dissent). I haven't gotten that far on reading yet.
She was probably afraid (and with good reason) that she'd get tasered if she refused. Common sense was obvsiouly lacking in this school district. I expect she'll be getting a bundle of money from the district via a civil suit. She'll be able to afford to send her own children to private school or stay home and homeschool them.
I just did this as a moot court in a college class. I was assigned the role of Kennedy. I did my homework on NSAID’s. You should know the girl who implicated Redding had Naprosyn as well. Side effects in adults for first time use is intestinal bleeds. It gets worse when this drug is mixed with other NSAID’s. This school also had a student nearly die from taking OTC drugs within the past year. This is a complicated case.
I wonder how the lady that Obama wants on the court would have voted since she has sided with schools being able to curtail studetn’s freedom of speech rights.
Yeah, I would be pretty upset if MY principAL lost his principLES and condoned something like this as well...;-)
Exactly,, My daughter knows she is authorized to resist by force. Thats why they make lawyers. First of course, she will tell them that any attempt to forcibly remove her clothes will cause an immediate violent meeting with her dad.
Thomas is usually good. But i do not care what his reason is, he is dead wrong on this. A girl should never be subject to being strip searched by the public schools. A cop on the street couldnt DARE do this, but a principal can?
That’s what they just ruled.
I agree with Justice Thomas and regret the precedent.
If Thomas dissented, then Thomas is wrong on this one.
Read Thomas’s dissent. It makes a pretty good case, if not an indisputable one. At the very least, there was probable cause to believe that the girl possessed illegal drugs, and that is the basis for a legal search, which not even the majority disputed.
Personally, I wish conservatives from school boards on up would start running on a platform of no more elected idiots and no more idiot decisions. Just say no to a lack of common sense..
Its not the least bit complicated. The primcipal stripped a teen without notifying parents. Why the rush, watch her and call the cops, amd parents. Of course, had they done that, the cops would have correctly stated that they didnt have the right to strip search her, and a parent would have sanely refused.
Principal is power-drunk. Kid’s Dad should have stripped her and marched her into the hallway.
Interesting, they made the girl out to be a perfect honor role student who was never in trouble.
Perhaps having all the facts of the story would be nice, seems the local news left out some information.
The argument was made during oral arguments that the police could have gotten involved. You should know, one of the Justices suggested that the police could have handled it and at that point it becomes a cavity search. He wanted to know which search Redding would have preferred. At times the oral argument got both testy and humorous. Still, I think you get the point.
“The school can’t be held liable?? “
i think that the school itself can be held liable just not the individuals like principal or teachers themselves so any lawsuit would be against the school system itself
If not sure what difference it would make if the cops did the search rather than the teachers. Thomas’s dissent cited the long-standing doctrine that teachers act “in loco parentis,” and that this gives them a unique kind of authority in administering discipline. If the kid were a Muslim youth suspected of having anthrax hidden in his underwear, would Thomas’s critics object to a strip search?
Thank you for the additional information. There tends to be more to cases like this than reported by our incompetent reporters.
We all talk big about the framers and “original intent”. So exactly *which* founding father would have said this was permissible by ANY government agent, much less by a school marm?
This is closer to China 2009, than to Philadelphia 1776.
I beg to differ. The drugs were to be distributed at lunch and they didn’t know if she had taken any. Her safety became an issue. See my other post about calling the cops. It then becomes a cavity search. They also had a similar experience with this and the student nearly died.
So it must suck to be a diabetic who needs insulin shots or a kid with asthma and not be able to use an inhaler because “prescription” drugs are banned.
No, it is not. All the "issues" you listed are just "blowing smoke".
Government officials do NOT have the power to strip search my child. I'm glad the Supreme Court has told them that, before there was a possiblity that I might have to. I would have been no where near as polite as they.
I would have been just as disgusted by one idiot...but three, all in the same place, and later backed up by their superiors......amazing. Makes me want to lock my kid up in a closet until they're 40.
You're not implying that boy's SHOULD be strip searched at school, are you?
How about: A student should never be subject to being strip searched by the public schools?
By school officials?
Yes.
Ask any street cop if such a case would lead to a body cav search. Weak case, even if it was crack rather than ibuprofen. Find crack on person “A” who says i got it from person “B”? You better not be strip and cav searching person B based on that. And past behavior won’t justify the present case either.
At best it might, by jail personal, if she was
*already* being booked.
Well, if you read Thomas’s dissent and the context of the events, it makes a whole lot more sense than it does in this newspaper article, which seems intentionally written to distort what actually happened. This was not some girl using OTC ibuprofen for a common cold, but an apparent trader and abuser of prescription drugs and alcohol, and it sounds like there was a lot of that going on at that school, and that this girl had been previously involved in it. This was NOT a case of teachers harrassing a girl using an OTC drug for legitimate purposes, but a case of teachers trying to stop widespread drug abuse in a school of early teens.
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