Supreme Court set to deal a blow to student's and young women's privacy rights

Posted April 27th, 2009 by JTjaden

In case you don't know, last week SCOTUS heard oral arguments in Safford Unified School District v. Redding in which the school district strip searched Savana Redding (represented by the ACLU), an eighth grade honor roll student, based on uncorroborated claims that she possessed prescription strength ibuprofen by another student facing punishment. This is not only clearly unconstitutional but humiliating and degrading. Why didn't they get permission from her parents? Or make sure they could substantiate the search with something other than the word of another student facing punishment? They didn't even strip search the first student who was in possession of two over the counter pain relievers. The comments by the justices seem to be very strong evidence for another woman on the Supreme Court the next time there is an opening.

Articles below

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The Supreme Court is neither hot nor bothered by strip searches.

By Dahlia Lithwick Posted Tuesday, April 21, 2009, at 7:49 PM ET

    Editorialists and pundits have found much to hate in what happened to Savana Redding. Yet the court today finds much to admire. And even if you were never a 13-year-old girl yourself, if you have a daughter or niece, you might see the humiliation in pulling a middle-school honor student with no history of disciplinary problems out of class, based on an uncorroborated tip that she was handing out prescription ibuprofen. You might think it traumatic that she was forced to strip down to her underclothes and pull her bra and underwear out and shake them in front of two female school employees. No drugs were found. But even those justices lacking a daughter, a niece, or a uterus had access to an amicus brief in this case documenting the fact that student strip searches "can result in serious emotional damage" and that student victims of strip searches "often cannot concentrate in school, and, in many cases, transfer or even drop out." Savana Redding, herself a data point, described the search as "the most humiliating experience" of her life. Then she dropped out of school.

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http://www.slate.com/id/2216608/

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Strip Searches Can Still Humiliate, Decades After the Fact

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    They made me take the shirt off, and obliterated any sense of autonomy I thought I had. I got the sense the counselor knew she was doing something fishy but covered by "bringing in the nurse who has to check it out." Forced to sit shirtless in front of these two women, I felt exposed and humiliated, embarrassed and angry. I felt they weren't just judging my actions but my body. We talk a lot on the XX Factor about young women and their changing ideas about privacy. But no matter who you are, being forced to take your clothes off against your will is an act of humiliation, embarrassment, and violation. It stings to know that 8 years after my own strip search, those feelings still don't matter.

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http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/archive/2009/04/22/a-guest-pos...

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Stripped of common sense

    Some Supreme Court justices tipped their collective shaky hand last week while hearing arguments regarding the constitutionality of strip-searching students as part of schools' drug policies.

    The justices' comments indicate they will overturn a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion that found an Arizona school's decision to strip-search a 13-year-old honor student unconstitutional.

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    Our broad-brush "war on drugs" leaves no room for critical or sensible thinking. Strip searching for ibuprofen? Strip searching an honor student who has never been in trouble based on the word of a girl who is in trouble? Strip searching at all? That's just as wrong-headed as school drug policies that test students who go out for extra-curricular activities.

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    An exasperated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lithwick writes, tried to explain the difference but Breyer was too busy reminiscing.

    "In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my underwear," Breyer said. Then: "Or not my underwear. Whatever. Whatever. I was the one who did it? I don't know. I mean, I don't think it's beyond human experience."

    Justice Antonin Scalia, Lithwick reports, was almost chortling when he wondered what happens after "you search the student's outer garments, and you have a reasonable suspicion that the student has drugs. You've searched everywhere else. By God, the drugs must be in her underpants!"

    Except, of course, when they are not.

    Senior moments do not good Supreme Court decisions make.

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20090427/OPINION01/704279981

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More than a silly strip search

Debra J. Saunders

Sunday, April 26, 2009

    When she was a 13-year-old student at Safford Middle School in Arizona, Savana Redding was strip-searched by school officials in search of - this is no joke - ibuprofen. Now she is suing the district and the officials for violating her Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.

    It is not good for Redding that while the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on her case last week, Justice David Souter commented, "My thought process is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can't find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry."

    The good news, I guess, is that Souter is not the surgeon general, because he seems unable to distinguish between Advil and methamphetamine.

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/25/IN4G16HUMM.D...