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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."
I'm really hoping to see a large bitch-slap style ruling against the school district. This whole thing is just shameful.
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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.
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.
... so that when they're older, they'll accept this and even more serious breaches of privacy from the government. Because it's to protect the children!
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
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
Nice try, FBI. I'm not falling for that one again.
So what could excessively intrusive have been in this case? Surgically cutting her open and checking all internal organs?
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
What I think is of importance here is how our culture treats children.
When does a child become a citizen if not at birth?
And, if children are citizens, what is the excuse of running schools with a level of oppression more appropriate of POW camps? Or making a child do something they are not ready or willing to?
Many parents resort to spanking their child to give them a lesson. When was the last time your boss spanked you or grounded you for not meeting the project deadline?
Our culture promotes treating children as property, making it "OK" for adults to abuse children verbally and psychologically and physically, just recently (in the last 100 or so years) addressing sexual abuse. Physical abuse is still widely accepted and even recommended. The right to privacy, the right to eat when and however much you want, the right to sleep when you are sleepy and use the bathroom when you are ready, are taken away from you when you are a child.
Strip searching a 13-year old girl is just a symptom of tour collective habitual disrespect for children's core dignity.
I suggest you check out this http://is.gd/oMQM and this http://is.gd/lQwS
Incorrect: "I was spanked as a kid and I turned OK."
Correct: "I was spanked as a kid and I grew up to believe that spanking is OK."
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.
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.
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."
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
Fucking forced logins..... here's the whole article:
March 24, 2009
Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy
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 p
Strip searching is completely different from, say, sending a child to bed without dinner.
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. Would not at all be interested in helping "open source software." Haven't you seen 12 year olds act like two year olds? And 22 year olds act like 12 year olds? If they don't get their way, they whine and cry and throw tantrums because they expect to get their way, because that's how it's happened all their life.
The world doesn't work that way. It is not incorrect to say I was spanked as a kid and I turned out [sic] OK. On the other hand, many people seem to think that if children's desires were just gratified more as a child, they wouldn't be so problematic. We are having more and more kids have everything the want, and it's been that way increasingly for a while now. Seen any improvements in "bad things" such as greed, poverty, violence, sexual assault, etc.?
I would venture to guess that school officials such as these two female ones that strip-searched a 13 year old girl based on an accusation from a kid (who, by the way, when faced with real consequences of his actions, thought he would just get out of it by lying - something some kids are spanked for and learn is not good. Hm...) are not accustomed to not getting what they want, and likely would have gotten quite mad if the girl had refused to do what they told her to. Authority "complexes" don't come from not having every desire fulfilled as a child. "Spoiled brats" are usually quite bossy and get quite angry when they don't get their way. Seems like that behavior continues into adulthood.
Curbing that behavior in a child is pretty important. It has nothing to do with dignity, it has to do with wanting the child to behave well and not simply float around, expecting (WRONGLY) everything to be his for the ordering. That is letting the child grow up in a lie. Very respectful of his dignity, I'm sure.
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."
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.
While I also think it is irrelevant, that just sounds really bad coming from a school official. You stay class Safford, AZ school district.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
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.
And homeschooling keeps them away from all those stupid people during their formative years and makes them completely inadequately prepared for having to deal with the rest of the world when they're kicked out of the house. I've known too many homeschooled kids to think that it's socially beneficial for them. They're often taken advantage of, and trodden upon because they don't have the social skills to deal with bullies and assholes.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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.
and
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."
and
"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?"
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.
2. There is also nothing reasonable about strip searching a 13 year old girl who was minding her own business
3. There is nothing reasonable about strip searching a girl even if she did have a prescription for Ibuprofen
What is happening is that special interest groups are normalizing this aggressive and authoritarian policy and practice towards children (and adults as well, but that's another topic). They are continuing to normalize and escalate these nasty and unwarranted attitudes and behaviours.
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.
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
Your using the learn-from-gutter-experience argument. I suspected it would come up eventually. Unfortunately I have only heard anecdotes but have seen no evidence to support this hypothesis. One example I do remember very well, is an academic military journal I read once. There was an article that observed whether people who are born and raised in rough environments make better infantry soldiers. The results are that people who are not exposed to abusive situations handle abusive situations much better when they are adults. In fact the street-wise kids were more likely to get eight balled from the army because of psychological problems.
I have personal anecdotes of this myself, but at least I have seen formal evidence of what I am talking about in a scientific journal.
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.
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'
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
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.
Guns are the first tool only of those too weak and too stupid to apply any other means to solving their problem.
paintball
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.
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.
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.
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