Student forced to strip prevails

WASHINGTON – Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on the suspicion she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday. The decision put school districts on notice that such searches are “categorically distinct” from other efforts to combat illegal drugs.

In a case that had drawn attention from educators, parents and civil libertarians across the country, the court ruled 8 to 1 that such an intrusive search without the threat of a clear danger to other students violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search or seizure.

Justice David Souter, writing perhaps his final opinion for the court, said that in the search of Savana Redding, now a 19-year-old college student, school officials overreacted to vague accusations that Redding was violating school policy by possessing the ibuprofen, equivalent to two tablets of Advil.

What was missing, Souter wrote, “was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear.”

It was reasonable to search the girl’s backpack and outer clothes, but Safford Middle School administrators made a “quantum leap” in taking the next step, the opinion said. “The meaning of such a search, and the degradation its subject may reasonably feel, place a search that intrusive in a category of its own demanding its own specific suspicions,” Souter wrote.

Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. “Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment,” Thomas wrote.

He said administrators were only being logical in searching the girl. “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he wrote. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”

Redding said the decision “feels fantastic.” She described herself as shy and “not a good public speaker,” but said the long legal battle “was to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.”

The case, Safford Unified School District #1 v. Redding, began when another student was found with prescription-strength ibuprofen and said she received it from Redding.

Safford Middle School assistant principal Kerry Wilson pulled the quiet honors student out of class, and she consented in his office to a search of her backpack and outer clothes. When that turned up no pills, he had a school nurse take Redding to her office, where she was told to remove her clothes, shake out her bra and pull her underwear away from her body, exposing her breasts and pelvic area.

No drugs were found, and Redding said she was so humiliated by the incident that she never returned to the school. Her mother filed suit against the school district, as well as Wilson.

After years of legal proceedings, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit eventually ruled in her favor.

Justices based their view on the court’s warning in a 1985 case that, although school officials have leeway in deciding when searches of students are reasonable, the officials may not employ searches “excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”

Lower courts have had trouble deciding when that standard applies, Souter wrote, so Wilson should not be held personally liable for the incident. The court ruled, though, that Redding’s suit could proceed against the school district.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens criticized the decision to remove Wilson from the suit, saying he should have known the search violated Redding’s rights.

“Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity,” Ginsburg wrote.