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Middle-School Strip Search Ruled Unconstitutional
yuna49 writes "The US Supreme Court today ruled 8-1 that the strip search of a 13-year-old girl by officials in an Arizona middle school was unconstitutional. However, by a vote of 7-2, the Court also ruled that the individual school officials could not be held personally liable. A suit for damages against the school district itself is still going forward. We discussed this case at length back in March when the Court decided to hear the case on appeal."
This is America, where children are the Enemy.
Unless the district had a policy that made this a requirement of the officials, they should be held personally accountable for these horrid actions.
Clarence Thomas, who 'asserted that the majority's finding second-guesses the measures that educators take to maintain discipline "and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge."'
I can't imagine how forcing a 13-year old girl to strip ensures anyone's health and safety, especially since they were looking for IBUPROFIN, for heaven's sake.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Those sons-of-bitches should be fired and prosecuted for child abuse, at the very least. They humiliated and terrified a good child, who had done no wrong previously, over fucking MOTRIN.
Just because it was "clearly established law" doesn't make it right to ignore that abusive treatment. At risk of godwin-ing this early, this stinks of "just following orders."
Good point, it's interstate commerce!
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
Okay, I'll admit that, like most Slashdotters, I skip the occasional article and jump straight into the comments, but people should really take the time to read this one!
For instance:
and
The discussion about wether the School Administrator should be held responsible is similarly contentious.
Its nice to know that they chose well on upholding her rights, but its sad how close a thing it seems from the article.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
You'll get used to it by the time you hit 20 :)
Does he have the same copy as the rest of us?
They posted pics of the whole thing online. I would have sued about that too, but then again, they were suprisingly tasteful. I mean, she did use one of them as her yearbook photo.
The reason the officials were not held responsible is because of an idea called qualified immunity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity) which essentially states that public officials cannot be held personally responsible for actions they undertake as part of their public duty and which, if illegal or unconstitutional, must clearly be illegal or unconstitutional.
It is interesting to note that the two Justices that dissented regarding whether or not the school officials were covered by qualified immunity were Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that Justice Souter was a part of the majority. If Sotomayor is placed on the bench, it is feasible she would rule much closer to Justice Ginsburg and Stevens then to Souter on these types of matters.
I hope this moves right into airline security. If the school can't search a student without a warrant, why can the TSA (government agency) search our bags and persons without a warrant?
The theory is that although attending school is required by law, you don't have to fly. By choosing to fly, you voluntarily agree to be searched. Of course the reality is that other forms of long-distance travel are prohibitively inconvenient, but they're right that everyone who chooses to fly understands the rules beforehand.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
... if I was her brother or father I'd probably *still* be in jail for assault.
There is a war going on for your mind.
There, fixed that for ya.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Do you really think that "We were just following orders" would be a legitimate exuse?
FRA: STFU GTFO
However, by a vote of 7-2, the Court also ruled that the individual school officials could not be held personally liable
What good is the ruling if there's no consequence? It seems to me that the biggest problem with government is that there's almost no accountability, and that leads to corruption & abuse of power.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Because now we know that we can store torrents and pirated files in children's underpants (aka UnderWarez) that cannot, constitutionally, be searched by their school administrations.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
Two things, there has to be a happy medium as to what is expected from school officials(these were obviously wrong). 1.) Administrators need to be able to search(strip searching is off the table IMO). 2.) If you think the kid has something(dangerous) hidden there should be a trained police officer on site aka School Resource Officer(SRO) who can make the call as to get the proper authorities involved. Also I concur any administrator who thinks they have the right to strip search a 13yr old student should be pinned to the wall. The extent of their all powerful positions is to expel pupils not strip search them.
Court also ruled that the individual school officials could not be held personally liable
If the courts won't hold them liable, than the people must! If the administrators responsible don't quit, than the students need to go on strike. How can anyone consent to their peers being abused in this manner?!?!? It's time parents, teachers, and students stand up for each other and demand that the administration step down. These pigs are either power hungry megalomaniacs or contributor to sexual assault (or both).
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
Drugs Drugs Drugs. This is still coming down as a casualty of the war on drugs. What 'worse' could the 12 year old have had? MJ? Heroin? Maybe she's the large portion of 12 year old meth heads.
Imagine a world where nothing was illegal, even for a 12 year old. They could follow the home style justice that some parents used to do with cigarettes they found: Make the kid smoke them ALL. One sitting. I know more people who have been stopped from smoking with this tactic than "Hey kids, don't smoke. It's a adult thing"
I totally agree. Given the transparency and openness of the Soviet system, it's 20 gaziliion trillion percent sure that if it had happened, we'd all know about it.
And Russia still pwnz everyone at libert[eh|ai|é] and all that shite. I mean, nosy journalists would never be assassinated by agents of the state. And even if they did, there'd never be a rigged trial to let the culprits walk away Scot-free.
Now some might say that you communidiots are as bad as the libertards, and that it would be a most excellent idea to drop you all in some irrelevant and expendable place like Somalia, Belgium or Detroit and let you slug it out, all on prime time TV. Ignore them; they're capitalist running pig-dogs, all of them, and they'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Wrong. Iit is not written (or stored in a permanent form) defamation of it is employees.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ahem!
Emphasis mine
Also, See Here
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Hey, here's a thought. The child Did Not have the suspected drugs on her person, and was searched on suspicion of such. The parents, in your argument, did the correct thing and ensured that their child did not carry the inappropriate item to school, but they administrators did the search anyways.
Would you like to review your argument and get back to us a little later?
As Justice Stevens 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 of some magnitude." But it took Justice Thomas to get to the heart of it, when he said, "Whadda ya mean, no one took pictures?"
It's cool if I forcibly strip-search a 13 year-old girl as long as I'm a school official working on "official business." I can't be held accountable.
But if that same girl willingly texts me a cellphone pic of herself in a bikini, I'm looking at time in hard prison and branded a sex offender for life.
Seems perfectly logical to me.
Did Stevens have Thomas in mind when he wrote "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 of some magnitude.â
When Thomas was nominated to Brennan's seat, the biggest complaint I remember was not Anita Hill or his ideology, but his skills. To be on the Supreme Court ou're supposed to be a scholar.
So a minor with a naked picture of another minor on their phone is a sex offender, but an adult in a position of power who forces a minor to strip is not.
Remember, Clarence Thomas was the one who was accused by Anita Hill of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings, and got away with it. So why should it surprise anyone that he would find it perfectly acceptable for a government employee to strip search a 13 year-old girl? His dissent was the closest he could get to saying "Hot damn, I wish I'd been there to do it myself!" The man is a misogynist and a perv and the only reason why he was confirmed was because of his race.
Seriously, Justice Thomas, Scalia, and Alito are the three Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Roberts is the understudy. The problem is that they have such a narrow, literal understanding of constitutional law that they utterly fail to appreciate how laws only have meaning when they are understood in the larger context of the needs of a diverse and ever-changing society. The Founding Fathers understood the Constitution to be a living document. No one so capable of drafting such words could possibly be so stupid or arrogant as to believe that the laws they created are forever perfectly formed. They knew they could not anticipate how American society would change over the centuries. The conservatives' insistence on the immutability of the Constitution is merely an excuse set forth in order to justify their attempts to holding onto power, even if it means denying entire classes of citizens their human rights.