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Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment
langelgjm writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to review a case involving the strip-searching of a 13 year-old girl who was accused of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen on school grounds, in violation of the school's zero-tolerance drug policy. The case has gained national attention because of the defining role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of school administrators to restrict students' free speech at school-sponsored events that take place off school property. The school described the strip-search as 'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.' The Supreme Court's last decision about searches on school property dealt only with searching a student's purse. Incidentally, the girl was found not to be in possession of any drugs, illegal or otherwise."
Is a teenager having a fucking ibuprofen such a monstrous and immediate security threat that we need to strip search her? Or was somebody just a little too eager to strip search a 13 year old? Hmm?
I wonder if the court would have upheld the 13-year old's right to strenously kick school officials in the balls for forcibly removing her clothing?
It seems to me that, since she *wasn't* found to be in possession of any drugs at all, she's in a good position to make somebody's life really, really uncomfortable for a while.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
why some families homeschool and believe their kids get a better education.
In Canada, as an adult, these things are completely illegal. I could presume these arbitrary strip searches would be illegal for adults in the USA as well. But when it comes to think-of-the-children conservativism, then hypocrisy is more important than reality. It's not just the fight against drugs and sex for these conservatives, it's a fight against freedom, and it is a fight for an authoritarian society. And don't let the people that are most likely to deny this convince you otherwise. They do get found out every once in a while, and sometimes they even go to jail. In the mean time we shouldn't be letting these people hurt children.
Don't forget, it wasn't just that it was prescription strength OTC medication (she could have taken a handful of "regular" pills for the same effect)
The entire thing was based on the accusations of another student. No one actually saw her with any pills of any kind. A strip search for what amounts to over the counter medication based on the accusations of another student.
If a student had accused the vice principal of the same thing, would they be expected to submit to a strip search?
Zero tolerance policies are the same as "I just don't want to make hard decisions" so instead you make f'ing stupid ones.
A "strip-search" performed by anyone other than a police officer acting with probable cause is a sexual assault.
People, including teens and children, have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary against such an attack, and should be trained to do so.
After some pervert principal gets his testicles crushed and his eyes gouged by a student he's trying to attack, perhaps we might see an end to this bullshit.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So what could excessively intrusive have been in this case? Surgically cutting her open and checking all internal organs?
The perps should be on the sex offenders' registry for the rest of their lives.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Home schooling fucks up your social skills. We need good public schools.
No. Socializing children fucks up their social skills. Have you ever been a child before? You should remember what it was like. Children are not good at teaching each other morals or good social skills. What they do learn from each other is Human Nature, which isn't a very good thing to learn if you are being taught by human children. Go to a football game in England to see what socialization does.
Maybe our legislators who are always so worried about sexual exploitation of children as an excuse to censor the internet and everything else, might want to look into whether prohibiting the government from forcibly stripping children naked shouldn't be a higher priority.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Amen.
I'm glad that the Ninth Circuit had the insight to say that this was wrong, I only hope that the Supreme Court is picking this up so that they can more firmly put this in the "Not Allowed" category. Schools need to understand that these are not their children and that for anything more intrusive than a locker search the parents should be involved.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Agreed. Though technically(and legally) student is in the care of the school while at school, it is important to understand the distiction between this and something like a prison. Just because the student was 13 doesnt mean she doesnt have constitutional rights. I think it would be reasonable to argue a 4th ammendment violiation in this case. Posession of an over the counter medication is NOT by any means probably cause for a strip search. I mean, come on people use some common sense. Now if she was accused of having a kilo of cocaine, and there was sufficient evidence to support that claim, then call the freakin police and have her arrested. By no means whatsoever should she be strip searched on the premises, especially not by school administration.
I think it would be reasonable to argue a 4th ammendment violiation in this case.
It's not just an illegal search, it's a goddamned felony. If these assholes go free while someone like Charlie Lynch goes to jail, then the law in the USA is a complete joke.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Wait. Not excessively intrusive in light of her age and sex? What the hell does THAT mean? Since when does a person's gender or age mean that a strip search is less intrusive? You're making somebody who's dramatically underage, BUT old enough to know what's going on, strip naked. If anything, the fact that she's young and female makes it MORE intrusive (I think the average boy would shrug it off better than a girl would; I might be wrong in that assumption, though). It sounds like whoever said that thinks young girls are worth less than other people, but I hope they're not actually saying that.
Those who anthropomorphize science and/or nature already believe in an intelligent designer.
The accusation was that she had prescription-strength ibuprofen, which is not OTC medication.
But I agree that the police should have been involved for any form of invasive search. There also shouldn't have been a zero-tolerance policy to begin with, as the enforcement of these often removes the gray area of judgment of when to enforce a policy and moves the gray area into how to enforce the policy, often erring on the side of draconian.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
that "Zero Tolerance" policies are absurd. There is a reason why we have judge and juries. Laws do not apply evenly. Regardless of the policy, any reasonable person would see how stupid it was to trust another student's accusations and then harass a student with a good record over one pill of OTC pain relief.
Just say no to zero tolerance.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Agreed. I grew up with Migraines. Pre- the wonderful better drugs we have now I needed to take massive amounts of Ibuprofen to keep them in check and hell-yeah I had it with me at all times including at school. "Prescription Strength" means 800mg = 4 over the counter pills = 1/2 what I needed to bring down a bad migraine.
Their mention of the "not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction" what.. she's a girl so we can strip search her? She's 13 so we can strip search her? She might, heaven-forbid, have *Advil* so we can strip search her?!?
Let them burn.
Before you condemn the living shit out of the school district, try to remember that they have an affirmative responsibility to prevent students from harming themselves while in school.
Sorry, you're 100% full of shit. They failed in their responsibility to protect the children in their care, in case you didn't RTFA one of them got strip searched, for christ's sake.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
"role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds"
I love how America has so many laws and yet regardless of how many patriotic movies it creates it still believes the constitution has limited application.
If I was the girls father I would now be facing my own charges of assault and battery for beating the shit out of the school assistance principle and the two staffers who strip searched my daughter for suspicion of having a fucking aspirin.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
She did not have any drugs in her posession. All the school officials had as reason was the accusation of another girl who had been caught and was trying to shift blame.
But their attitude was clearly "guilty until proven innocent":
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Either way, does it matter? The question when you are going to act on all laws/rules is, did anyone get hurt or their rights violated. If the answer is no, and someone wasn't acting recklessly (like going 50 in a 25 mph zone), then the law/rule should not be enforced or it should carry little to no punishment. In this case it is quite obvious the girl was not high on painkillers, wasn't selling them, and didn't even have solid evidence she even had them when she was accused. Such things should be dismissed with no consequence. A 13 year old should be perfectly allowed to carry ibuprofen, even prescription strength (which is only equal to like 3 regular pills) on their person especially if there was some need for them.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The problem is the "zero tolerance" mentality.
Exactly. "Zero tolerance" is newspeak for "zero common sense." Anyone who isn't capable of applying their own judgement instead of blindly following a rule in a situation like this is far too stupid to have anything to teach a child.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Just so you know...
Prescription strength ibuprofen is 800mg of ibuprofen in one pill.
As opposed to OTC ibuprofen which is 200mg of ibuprofen in one pill.
i.e., if you have 4 advil, you have the equivalent of one prescription strength ibuprofen.
---
In ANY case, school administrators should not (and probably DO not) have the legal authority be able to strip search a minor.
That's a police matter. And even then, I think the parents should be present.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
As the parent of 3 homeschooled children, I can tell you that such a generic statement is complete rubbish.
Yes, if the kids a locked away and never socialize, they probably won't have good social skills.
That situation does not represent the experience of many homeschooled kids. In any area where there are significant groups of homeschooled children, there will be organizations through which these children can socialize, and there will be many, many other venues that can be found to meet other kids and socialize.
On the other hand, I expect that being strip-searched probably messes up social and other skills. While this is an unusual case, for far too many kids, being the recipient of bullying also messes up their social skills.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Okay, being 13 is perhaps not the same as being 18 or 21. But, at 13, you know damn good and well not to let some teacher or other adult force you into a situation where you feel violated or dirty.
I have a little girl who is turning five tomorrow. My wife and I have made the decision to not subject my child to the whims and such of any school officials. If my kid is ever put into a situation where these types of events are about to occur, then she is to immediately leave the school, call us, and damn what the fucking school board or local law enforcement says.
I have this child, and she is my prime responsibility in life. I don't care what some misguided school moron says is their right and the correct procedure. If nothing else, my kid can change school districts, and I'll go get my gun.
I feel sorry that this happened to this girl. However, I don't understand why she let it happened. Do any of us really think that the two female officials were going to hold her down and strip her naked in order to look for some crappy $4.00 pills?
Here's a simple maxim:
My kid. Not yours. Treat well and with respect. You hurt her, you commit a crime towards her, I get my gun. You die. I am bigger, and smarter, and I win, especially when I have the gun.
Anyone want to place bets the supreme court will agree with the state, and restrict a students rights?
After reading Morse v. Frederick, only John Paul Stevens understood the right for first amendment rights to protest illegal behavior. (aka Vietnam and medical marijuana as examples)
Chief Justice Roberts went along the normal "war against drugs" lie, that they had to punish the student to "SEND A MESSAGE"...
Justice Clarence Thomas viewed schools have no free speech and "Teachers commanded, and students obeyed."
It's crazy. I think I understand the issue better than then most of the Supreme Court, the most educated, the best of the best? They agreed to strip a fundamental right away for a war on drugs, and to make a teachers job easier. To allow a child to be randomly strip searched without proper cause? To prevent protests in a non-disrupting behavior off school grounds? wow.. just wow...
Why am I always disagreeing with them on most issues. I talk to co-workers, family and friends, and we seem to be in the same beliefs and values. Yet, I read the Supreme Courts views and I disagree, most of the time. I very rarely agree with the court. Few times have I cheered decisions about cases. Take Lawrence v. Texas which effectively legalized being gay. And of course, Scalia, Rehnquist, Thomas dissented. My favorite comment roughly (I cant find it) from Texas "We dont discriminate against Gays just Gay Sex", and a justice asked "What is the difference?"
I'll end this lengthy topic that means much to me with a Scala qoute.
"Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best ... But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else." --Scalia.
From TFA: "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."
And the assertions of the adults involved that they're not pedophiles and child molesters should not be misread to infer that they aren't, only that they were never caught.
Sheesh.
-- Alastair
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."
I would never want anyone from a school with this attitude to be involved in the education of my children.
Yep. I would say it's only fair for schools to be allowed to strip search students if parents are allowed to skin teachers/administrators with rusty vegetable peelers.
Anything less is cause for revolution.
Actually, come to think of it, isn't this exactly what that part of your constitution about carrying guns is for?
I don't therefore I'm not.
Exactly: zero tolerance = zero common sense. I agree with this, but how did this come about?
Look at the areas where "zero tolerance" has been applied - they are the areas most likely to have people unable to competently apply judgment. Removal of the grey areas assures that the same decision will be made every time for a given set of circumstances - essentially "dumbing down" the rules for those in authority.
Have we really fallen so far as to believe that we should follow leaders that need the rules "dumbed down"?
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Using the same logic the people conducting the strip search of a 13 year old student could very possibly be sex offenders then. Sure, they might not have a criminal record and aren't on the sex offenders register, but that just means they haven't been caught.
That's what I was thinking. If my daughter came home from school telling me she was strip searched by a school official or a police officer without a warrant, the first court case would be the one I would face for murder charges.
Agreed. This is not an adult suspected of illegal drug trafficking while crossing an international border. This is a 13 year old girl. THIRTEEN! And she was not suspected of trafficking in illegal drugs. Ibuprofen is a common medication in widespread use and is perfectly legal. The fact that something like this takes place in the United States of America is proof that this country is corrupt.
Just because the student was 13 doesnt mean she doesnt have constitutional rights.
I don't disagree with that. But all this focus on legalities (I'm tempted to go into my usual "slashdotters think too highly of their own legal expertise" rant) kind of misses the most important point: these school administrators humiliated a 13-year-old, all in the name of verifying that she wasn't "smuggling" some pills that aren't even for a drug of abuse! Rather than parsing the fine points of case law, we should be asking what kind of mentality makes this acceptable, legal or not.
The perps should be on the sex offenders' registry for the rest of their lives.
Lots of people are assholes. Many sex offenders are assholes. Being an asshole should not be sufficient to cause us to throw away our principles to crucify them. In this case, by all means, charge them with any applicable crimes. However, I, and many others, object to sex offender registries because they make it difficult or impossible for individuals to successfully re-enter society, by barring individuals from living in many areas, and for effectively punishing them beyond the time they serve in prison. So no, sex offender registries should not exist, and nobody should be put on them.
If I had found out that some school official strip searched my kid, regardless of age or sex; the officials involved would never have made it to trial.
For those that didn't RTFA:
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."
School is supposed to be a place where kids are safe. When the solution is worse then the crime you have a system out of control.
I don't know why you say it is obvious she wasn't selling them. The Fine Article says that someone else was caught with them (apparently without the required prescription) and she was accused of providing them. That removes the "obvious she wasn't selling" part for me. It's not proof she was, just no longer an obvious assumption she wasn't.
Well, first off, ibuprofen isn't an expensive drug so there is no financial incentive. Secondly, the same effect can be had by just taking a few more OTC pills. As for the providing part, its commonplace for people who have a sudden headache to ask someone for some ibuprofen, the 13 year old girl knew that she took them for her headaches so it would help the other person. This sort of thing happens *gasp* in adult society too, yet we think nothing of it. But when this takes place in a school situation suddenly the girl is a drug dealer.
Unfortunately, apparently neither girl had the "get out of jail free" card to justify carrying them. If you allow drugs without that prescription, the school then has to start drawing the line "which drugs are ok", and I, for one, don't think the schools have the understanding or ability to draw that line correctly, or SHOULD have the responsibility of drawing the line.
Its easy, no harm, not illegal, not a distraction, should be permitted. At most the parents should be called and asked if it is ok for the girl to be taking ibuprofen. Ibuprofen isn't directly harmful, it isn't illegal, it more than likely wasn't a distraction so it should be permitted. And while this should not be written in the rules, it should be effective policy by all staff members. This makes it trivial to get out the "bad drugs" while letting people take legitimate drugs. Cocaine, illegal, harmful and can easily be a distraction, therefore its banned. Antacids, not illegal, not harmful, and probably not a distraction, should not be banned.
That prevents the schools from becoming a place where kids whose parents love pills distribute them to kids whose parents don't approve, or to kids who are allergic or react badly to whatever it is.
By the time a kid is 13 they should know what they are allergic to and know not to get it. For example, I am allergic to peanuts and penicillin, even when I was in Kindergarten whenever something that could possibly have peanuts in it was served, I would ask if it had peanuts in it. Similarly, whenever I went to the doctor for a bacterial infection, I would mention I was allergic to penicillin. By the time someone is 13 they better know what they are allergic to and know how to find out what things are, otherwise they should not take it.
No, a "no drugs" policy is more reasonable than an arbitrary "some ok, some not" that can result in rules-lawyering and elective enforcement, and maybe worse.
Oh yes, because having someone strip searched for possible possession of ibuprofen is totally reasonable! Heck! Lets just start searching kids at the door for all kinds of harmful drugs such as cough drops, allergy pills, and even inhalers!
Elective enforcement is actually a good thing because it should prevent things like this from happening in the future.
Here's two points based on the FA that need to be made. First, one of the lawyers said that the school had no reason to believe that the girl was carrying the pills in her underwear or next to her body. I disagree. Another student accused her of supplying the pills. If they did not find the source in her locker or in her purse, then they had to be somewhere else. The next most logical place is stuck in her bra. While it was not likely, it was far from "no reason to believe".
Theres a saying, know when to fight your battles. In this case if you can't find the alleged ibuprofen, just admit that the source was lying and go on with your day. Had this been something actually dangerous such as a loaded firearm, or even illegal drugs, this might be at least somewhat warranted, but ibuprofen? Secondly, the girl had no disciplinary record, she wasn't known as the local drug dealer so why try to force the issue?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
If so, they should get a fucking warrant.
There is absolutely *NO* excuse for school officials sexually abusing a 13-year-old.
I don't know why you say it is obvious she wasn't selling them.
It's called motive, something that would be present for marijuana or ritalin, but is absolutely lacking for ibuprofen.
By your logic, if some kid told the principal that so-and-so had a unicorn and bringing pets to school was against the rules, the principal is well within his or her power to order so-and-so to be stripped to make sure she's not hiding the unicorn in her panties. After all, it's not the principal's job to prove that unicorns exist or that it might be possible that a unicorn be hidden in her underwear, it's the girl's job to prove that there is no such unicorn and she's lucky that she didn't get a cavity search.
Why wasn't the case brought up when she was 13?
Because, believe it or not, it takes time to go through all the court cases and appeals and more court cases and more appeals before your lawyer (or the government's lawyer) writes a letter to the supreme court asking them to review your case where it sits for a while before the court reads through them to decide whether or not it's going to take the case, and then it sits and waits for the court to go through all the cases that came in first. A google search for the girl's name turned up court documents from 2004, and I didn't even look to see if that was from the original trial or not.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
No they shouldn't. Barred from working with children? Probably. But that's about the extent of it.
This incident shows incredibly poor judgment, and suggests that the morons involved got way too caught up in their "no drugs in school" policy, but it does not, in any way, indicate a likelihood of the perpetrators seeking to abuse children for sexual pleasure.
Cavalierly throwing people on the registry is how we got to where we are now, where peeing in the bushes gets you marked with the scarlet letter for life, and Georgia's even started throwing non-offenders on the list.
The registry is questionable enough in the first place; treating it lightly like this just makes it worse.
Whether you can use the words "abuse", "negative experiences", whatever; I do know that I have seen zero evidence that exposing children (or adults) to negative experiences somehow leads to a positive.
I don't know why people are arguing that sheltering children is wrong. I'm not going to, for example, beat the shit out of my children just so they will get used to the pain of being beaten up. All the arguments in favour of this have so far not made any sense. If somebody could point to any science validating their points then I would take their arguments more seriously. As it is, people I have found tend to believe what they are taught my their parents, schools, and friends, which usually doesn't have much to do with reality and a lot to do with simple and common folklore.
Yes, that is true as far as the legal system is concerned, but i would bet that to the school administrators, they were at the very least reminded of the previous incident. Humans connect things and their intentions probably came from a desire to prevent another overdose.
Thankfully, school administrators are still subject to "the legal system." As for their purported desire to prevent anything, the ends still don't justify the means.
When I was a kid, we only had one Darth.
Where I am, "prescription" ibuprofen is 600mg per tablet, or the equivalent of 3 OTC ibuprofen. I even had a doctor tell my wife who had neck pain after an accident, "I could write you a prescription for ibuprofen, but it is exactly the same as taking 3 over the counter ibuprofen, which you probably already have." So yes, there should be no such thing as "prescription" ibuprofen. And strip-searching someone who denies having ibuprofen on the basis of so-and-so said she got a couple pain relievers from her does violate all standards of reasonableness. So what if they DID find it on her? My daughter takes 4 different prescription meds -- I would insist that she has every right to carry these with her to school, and that the school has no right to confiscate them from her. After all, if she doesn't take them, she dies -- it is that simple!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"The day that children are allowed to do anything they want regardless of the parents is the day that children rule the world. Have you ever seen a two year old? Completely selfish. "
Children naturally grow through different phases which make adults uncomfortable in different ways. Habitually, adults try to make children responsible for their comfort and change their natural behaviors. But children are not our emotional caregivers, it's the other way around.
A two year old is not selfish. This is a projection happening because we adults do not properly understand the psychology of the undeveloped human brain. Some skills develop before others, and that's predetermined by nature, not the child's choice. At the age of two the sense of "self" starts emerging. The child starts feeling their own will. Lots of experimentation, discovery of the world. Strong feelings and desires unmanageable for the child. A 2-year old does not have control over these and it will be years before it learns to self-regulate.
Saying that a child is selfish presumes that this is just a small-ish adult who acts selfishly. Incorrect. The social skills develop after the sense of "self" develops.
For instance what parents call temper tantrums are overwhelming floods of feelings which change the child's brain chemistry and often disables their ability to reason and even understand language.
There are many ways to prevent children from harming themselves or others without harming the children. There are ways to maintain boundaries without turning children into prisoners.
While I tend to agree with you, if you're going to have people end up on registries for things that don't actually harm anyone in a meaningful way like streaking or having sex in semi-public places, surely people like these school officials who cause genuine harm to a minor by sexually humiliating them should be on the list.
No they shouldn't. Barred from working with children? Probably. But that's about the extent of it.
...but it does not, in any way, indicate a likelihood of the perpetrators seeking to abuse children for sexual pleasure...
you don't know why the admin was strip searching the student.
Giving the benefit of doubt to an extremely poor act of judgment makes me glad you have nothing to do with my kids.
sigs are for losers (except to point out that sigs are for losers)
Being home-schooled denies you the social skills you might learn in school.
Here is another bullshit statement, being atheist denies my children the social skills they could learn in church activities.
I knew home-schooled people through my church. They were ostracized because they hadn't had experiences that we had had. We couldn't relate to them. They didn't get our jokes, and they didn't seem to understand reality.
Wow, that anecdotal evidence is stunning.
As the parent of home-schooled children, I think you are too close to the situation to make a rational assessment. No offense, but your kids may be very poorly adjusted and you just don't know it.
As a parent of non-homeschooled chidlren, I think you are too far away from the situation to make an assessment. No offense, but my kids are well adjusted and you just don't know it.
Slashdot - The great and glorious cluster fuck of Internet wisdom.
If the girl's parents had done this to her, the child would be forcibly removed from the home.
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Every day we start looking more and more like soviet russia. Just look at the slippery slope that the British have fallen down. They are getting ever so close to the bottom. Funny that they still value the things that americans should abhor. Royalty, excessive taxation, empire building, disarming the population, Orwellian surveillance....where do I stop? Some smart guys fought for independence from such tyranny and generations later their offspring have fallen back into the same well worn path as their european ancestors with gleeful abandon. We embrace everything we revolted against and why? Because we have let greed and the corporations assume control. Disarm the corporation as a legal entity. Make people responsible for their companies. Take their overwhelmingly loud voices out of the room and let the people speak for once. I'd love to taste an ounce of the freedoms we used to enjoy as privileged citizens of this fine country. Maybe our day will finally come. I look forward to that glorious day.
zosxavius photography
I don't understand what seeing a picture of her has to do with anything. However, there is a current picture attached to the article.
There was one part of the article which I found to be particularly illuminating:
"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."
What legal right exactly does schools have to do a search to begin with?
Seriously?
The fact that teachers got a child to snitch out another child over some ibuprofen is the first thing that should worry us.
The fact that adults thought it was appropriate to strip search a 13 year old over ibuprofen is the second thing that should worry us.
The fact that the child was so used to following authority that she did not say 'fuck you' when told to strip is the third thing that should worry us.
The fact that someone will actually defend this in hindsight is the most worrying thing of all. Would a full cavity search have been OK with you as well?
Finally I'm guessing that the previous 'overdose' was an equally stupid zero tolerance/cover your ass based overreaction.
The responsible people and the school need a severe smack down in civil court. Start by taking the vice principles net worth times four from him (leave him destitute and in debt). Then hit the school for enough money to pay for the girls college after lawyers fees.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
But as a practical matter, it was about slavery.
I'd say it had more to do with the fact that the framers had recently overthrown their king with their privately-owned weapons, having thwarted several attempts by the crown to disarm them. When the British marched to Concord, their mission was to seize the gunpowder the Americans had stockpiled there.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The problem is, you put your child in a school that doesnt have your family's interests at heart. And now you are complaining about not being put in the loop.
More parents need to wake up, most public schools are not interested working with parents, they are interested in maintaining an envoirnment of dumb workers that companies can rely on not to make a fuss about things.
There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today.
The point of my post was to correct the parent, who thought the Second Amendment was intended to serve as some sort of back-stop against Federal tyrrany. While that's true, the practical reason for the Second Amendment is that private ownership of guns was necessary to perpetuate slavery.
How this notion of protection from Federal largesse survived the Whiskey Rebellion is anybody's guess. I suppose even Libertarians need their mythology.
1.There is nothing reasonable or doubtful that thinking that two advils would do serious harm, or even minor harm to a 13 year old girl.
Exactly. It's prescription medicine, no mention is made of whether she had a prescription. If the school's "zero tolerance" drug policy forbade prescription drugs, that's the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard, and I've heard some pretty fucking stupid things.
"I'm sorry, Mrs Splodnatzki, your son died today in detention after we caught him trying to inject himself with Insulin. It was his blood testing kit and the prescription in his bag that tipped us off... They go bad so young these days, you really should consider your parenting. Just be glad he wasn't experimenting with Aspirin or antibiotics!"
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I had some pain-based health problems when I was in school (I was 17 at the time) and I always carried my painkillers with me and a jolly good thing too.
If my back went during class, I'd have struggled to get off my chair, let alone walk across the classroom, open the door, and then walk all the way to the office of whoever my painkillers were with in the hope that they were there.
I can see why people want a verdict about the reaosnablness of such an invasive search on this issue, but for this case the school should be ruled against on the far more fundamental basis that as a public school, they have no business trying to operate a zero tolerance policy to over-the-counter medication or prescription mediation for which the person has a prescription.
Also, teachers\school administrators performing strip-searches? WTF? What concievable reason is there for them to do that? If the student is possibly doing something which is properly illegal (not against school rules 'illegal' - properly against-the-law illegal) then turn them over to the police. Otherwise; this is already way out of hand.
FGD 135
Well, you're wrong. America's economy depended on slavery. Guns were necessary for slavery. Connect the dots.
Boy, those are some reeeeaaalll far apart dots to connect. Sorry, pal, but the economies of the Northern states in 1789 had nothing to do with slavery. Even the Southern states' economies weren't inextricably tied to slavery until after the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1793.
As others have mentioned, the framers of the Constitution had just finished overthrowing England's colonial administration and had this in mind. And note that neither after the Whiskey Rebellion or after the end of slavery did the government abolish the Second Amendment, which would seem not to fit with your theory. On top of all that, the Supreme Court of the United States has held repeatedly that the framers' intent wasn't even related to militias per se, but as a purely individual right. (I don't agree with this interpretation personally, but I am willing to believe that Supreme Court justices are better qualified to interpret the Constitution than you or me.) So while it squares nicely with modern revisionist "People's History"-style historical interpretations, the whole "slavery" argument you're pushing really just holds no water.
Look, I'm not a NRA member, I haven't held a firearm since my grand-dad taught me to shoot when I was 12, and I'm all for restricting the access to guns in America. So I'm not philosophically out of line with your ideal outcome. But when you extrapolate wild things like the Second Amendment being related to slavery, you appear to abandon logic and do harm to your own cause.
"95% of all Slashdot
Zero tolerance is an abdication of responsibility. "I enforce a policy of zero tolerance" means, quite literally, "I don't know how to do my job".
rj
I don't think the school had reasonable suspicion just because another student claimed to have gotten the pills from her. Informants frequently lie and children also frequently lie. The risk from an ibuprofen tablet simply is not great enough to justify a strip search of a child.
"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."
So, he (the spokesperson/whoever made that statement) works with kids his whole life and most of them are bad, ergo all are bad? Use logic people! Or at least stick to deductive if you're too stupid to attempt inductive, as these people evidently are. WTF do they think they're saying?? Innocent until proven guilty. There's a thousand holes in that statement. What were these people thinking?
$ make available
Guns are the first tool only of those too weak and too stupid to apply any other means to solving their problem.
paintball
I don't buy the argument that sex offender registries should exist, but even if you do, these people don't belong on them.
Wrong. These people need to be made examples of. The types of people who strip search 13 year old girls for prescription drugs are the same types of people who want to put 19 year old boys on sex offender lists for dating 17 year old girls. It's these people who are always talking about how we need to make examples of criminals so that we can deter people from misbehaving. They clearly need a taste of their own medicine, and a 10 to 20 year jail sentence.
This case isn't about if school's can have Zero-Tolerance rules, but did they act inappropriatly when they involutarily, and without parental consent, strip-searched a 13 year-old girl, because they suspected she had ibuprofen (Advil, that's right plain, old, ADVIL ) on her.
If this case actually involved illegal possession, they should have contacted the police and let them handle it. Since it was simply a case of an over-zealous enforcement of a zero-tolerance policy, I think school administrators should have been limited to suspending the student.
And I do feel the need to mention, they didn't even find any pills.
How's this for a rule, School administrators DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES get to strip-search anyone. Pat them down, search their bags, remove them from the general student body, call the police and let them do their thing, but you, as school administrators, do not have the authority to strip anyone naked, for any purpose.
I agree that our society is prone to hysteria about sex-offenders. However, if you think that's a basis for letting these administrators off the hook then you are entirely missing the point:
Situation 1: A school administrator strip-searches a 13 year old honor student upon the flimsiest pretext. The student is forced to show her vagina and spread her legs.
Outcome: The defiant school district defends its administrators all the way to the Supreme Court. School officials and prosecutors solemnly testify about the incalculable harm created by drugs and the necessity of a zero-tolerance policy.
Situation 2: A 13 year old girl uses her cell phone to take a scandalous photo of herself and sends it to her boyfriend. The school discovers this after confiscating the boy's cellphone when it rings in class.
Outcome: Both kids are criminally prosecuted for trafficking child pornography. School officials and prosecutors solemnly testify about the incalculable harm created by 'sexting' and the necessity of a zero-tolerance policy.
Obviously the real issue is not the sanctity of our children's bodies. The real issue is that some of our school administrators are using every possible pretext to expand and consolidate their power over students. By crassly exploiting the "think of the children" sentiment, schools institute ever more invasive and authoritarian policies. We are turning our schools into a police state. Instead of teaching our kids how to be responsible citizens, we are priming them for a totalitarian society.
Their attitude wasn't "Guilty until proven Innocent." It was "Guilty despite being proven Innocent" or simply "Guilty".
Thus, the right to bear arms was in fact a concession to the South.
I'm sure that would come as a considerable surprise to the Vermont militia, who used their privately owned firearms to prevent federal troops from entering Vermont to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. I would doubt that John Brown would agree with you, either.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Every day we start looking more and more like soviet russia. Just look at the slippery slope that the British have fallen down. They are getting ever so close to the bottom.
You should be aware that, in terms of asshat-ery in schools, there is a lot worse going on in the US than in the UK. IIRC, in UK schools they're much more likely to get the official process involved sooner which is at least less open to these sorts of abuses.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
"...The practical reason for the Second Amendment is that private ownership of guns was necessary to perpetuate slavery."
I cannot let this go unchallenged.
The practical reason was that the Founders had just won a war against the most powerful nation on Earth starting with a privately-armed militia. They knew from strong, recent experience that a people well practiced with arms they owned were the first defense against tyranny.
Concorde -- "the shot heard round the world" -- was fought over a gun-control action: the British trying to confiscate privately owned arms and put them into an armory they controlled.
I agree with your comment to this extent: citizens should be able to possess the current military issue-weapon. In our times, that would be M-16s, or at least its semi-auto equivalent, the AR-15 and clones thereof.
(Hey, Mr. Obama! Want your new mandatory-volunteer corps to be actually-volunteer? Set it up as an Article 1, Section 8 militia, and let volunteers keep their issue weapon after their training hitch in high school.)
In any event, times have changed. The very first gun control measures were laws keeping guns out of the hands of slaves, indentured servants, and Indians. Many modern gun control laws were originally enacted after the Civil War to keep guns out of the hands of freed black men.
One of the reasons given in the infamous Dredd Scott decision for not accepting black people as real human beings was specifically that then they'd be allowed to possess arms under the Second Amendment.
In my own lifetime...look up Deacons For Defense and Justice, armed black churchmen who rode with other, more pacifistic civil rights activists as body guards.
In the current case, scroll down through this thread and read the comments from those who would use their arms on the school thugs who perpetrated this vile sex crime. That's what the right to keep and bear is about -- not revolution, not overthrowing the government, but checking it, returning it to its limits. Reminding officials who might otherwise think themselves above the law that there are consequences beyond the law. Yes, the citizens imposing those consequences would be in prison or dead themselves -- but that's exactly what Jefferson was talking about when he said the Tree of Liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.
(And, yes, I agree one hundred percent that sex-offender registries are also abominations, but if we're going to have them, the two women who actually performed the search and any school official who approved it should damn well be on one, if they survive prison.)
In the wrong hands, sanity is a dangerous weapon.
And cocaine is perfectly legal if you have a prescription.
LSD is perfectly legal if you have a DEA Schedule 1 chemicals license.
The fact that she can buy it over the counter has no bearing on whether or not it is legal for her to possess in school.
I am not supporting the rule here, I think its absolutely fucking ridiculous. However, this is the logical conclusion of the idea that the government should be in the business of regulating what people put into their own bodies.
It started with opiates, and has just slowly grown, like a cancer on our society trying to take more and more control. Now, we have girls being strip searched for midol.
Frankly, given the sins of this dangerous idea, a strip searched girl is hardly even newsworthy. Never mind a cartel in mexico has declared they will kill every day until the chief of police steps down. A cartel primarily funded by black market drug sales... a group that couldn't grow and survive in an open market, thrives under this policy.
But a 13 year old girl was strip searched.... no really THAT is where these policies have gone too far.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Vietnam did pretty fucking well for themselves.
Well the thing is - she wasn't even *suspected* of having anything but some standard headache medicine. Now if she'd been suspected of having heroin on her, and if there was some actual good evidence linking her to having it - the school could have called the cops and have them search her. In this case however - do you think the cops would strip search her on suspicion of having headache medicine?
Would the school officials have used force if the student refused?
What if the student used force against the school officials to avoid the unwarranted search?
What if the school officials had search 300 girls instead of just one? How many would still see this as reasonable?
If carrying ibuprofen is such a dangerous drug that it requires a strip search, shouldn't the police be called in the first place? It scares me mostly that the school can do this kind of investigation without having to call the authorities.
In case a student was suspected of carrying an illegal drug (no matter which drug), the police should have been informed. In this case the drug she was suspected of carrying was not illegal (it required a prescription still but that doesn't make it illegal in itself). She should have been questioned first at the very least.
The scariest part in this matter is for me that school authorities apparently have (or at least think they have) this kind of investigative powers. They may have certain powers, after all they have a bunch of school children to look after, but this is definitely going to far. This are powers of a kind that belong in the hands of the police only. Next thing you know is that teachers are allowed to carry weapons as a way to help them keep/restore order.
Hang on, the weapons the French used to give you a country were owned by the French government :)
I really think it's more symbolic about a gun being a badge of freedom than practical. The creation myth of a few guys with muskets freezing in the woods winning a country is a really good story but is oversimplifying a global struggle.
Every paragraph should have ended with "By the way, this was over *ibuprofen*. What the fuck were these people thinking?" The very premise of the search was beyond moronic.
Property is theft.
US deaths: 58k
NVA deaths: 1.1 million
Care to rethink that thought?
It would have been completely reasonable for the girl to beat to death anyone who tried to force her to strip.
I don't care what the circumstances are. If an adult tries to force a girl to strip, that's rape. Rape victims are free to take any measures necessary to protect themselves, as far as I am concerned