I dunno. If there are no 4th Amendment rights in play here, then the “stranger on the street” standing of the school officials would make the strip search some form of sexual assault on a minor, which I’m guessing is a felony.
I’m wondering about this as well. How is a school administrator allowed to perform a strip search in the first place. They’d be better served simply holding the child in the office under watchful eye until the police showed up. The idea that school officials are allowed to act in such a fashion strikes me as somewhat non-kosher.
Any of our resident legal eagles care to comment on the powers granted to school employees?
I like this quote from him:
Oh, the horror that we should judge the measures they take! :dubious:
God forbid.
Yes, he’s a tool.
They don’t, not if they’re smart.
My sister has worked as an assistant principal in middle school for several years. If she has a kid that needs to be searched, first she asks.
“May I open your backpack and search it? Will you empty your pockets for me?”
It’s completely non-coercive. Most of the kids agree, even though they are carrying contraband. If they refuse, she goes to the next step.
“Okay, that’s fine. The sheriff’s deputy will be by in about fifteen minutes. I’m going to put your backpack under lock and key where no one can get to it, and you can sit here with me until he arrives.”
Then, when the deputy arrives, the deputy gets to make the call on searching.
I’m guessing this is the first Supreme Court case regarding the constitutionality of a school’s actions with respect to a disciplinary measure that you’ve ever read in your life. Am I right?
This. And if they forced her, in my trial for shotgunning everybody present (except my daughter), I’d demand a jury trial.
I am a teacher. Now, thanks to the liberal pansies on the Supreme Court, I have to be constantly on the lookout for teenage girls smuggling Advil in their panties, knowing full well that I am powerless to strip-search them. You tell 'em, Clarence!
I’d be very upset if any school official wanted to see a naked or semi-naked teenager, especially if they were using flimsy excuses to get the child to strip. Isn’t there a nasty word for that, and jail sentences? Aren’t a lot of priests getting in trouble for that sort of thing? And we’re saying it’s OK? A school official is not law enforcement. If one came within yards of my child(ren) with intent to have them remove their clothes for ANY reason, I’d hurt someone. You may call me and the police, and we will deal with it from there. My child will keep his or her clothes ON, you pervert.
One concept Thomas ignored in the majority opinion is that of proportion: the idea that the seriousness of the threat must be taken into account when deciding how far a school can go in invading a student’s privacy. They were looking for ibuprofen, not heroin. Thomas’s objections might make sense if the court had ruled that strip searches are completely forbidden regardless of circumstances. No one on the court is that dumb, although Thomas is apparently dumb enough to read the majority opinion and think that’s what it said.
This is where I think the court got it totally wrong. Either you can search, or you cannot search. If you can search, you must be allowed to conduct a thorough search, otherwise what is the point? Are we only worried about catching kids who are dumb enough to keep contraband in searchable places? Thomas is 100% right in saying the Court decision “announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school”
In this case, I don’t think the school had enough reasonable suspicion to legitimately compel a search, even of just her backpack. If they did have reasonable suspicion, then that right to search goes all the way, to any place that one might ‘reasonably’ conceal the contraband. School isn’t prison, nobody is going to stick a baggie full of Advil up their ass when they can just walk in with them in their pocket.
I think that your comments are sort of missing the point, Jack. The point of the OP was that eight of the nine justices agreed that strip-searching a 13-year old girl over Advil was not justifiable; that there was only one vote that thought it WAS justifiable; that vote was from Justice Thomas, and his rational was this bit about suspicion not being dispersed.
So, the beginning point of this discussion is that practically everyone on the planet agrees the action wasn’t warranted, except for Clarence Thomas. And the discussion is why in the whirled he would vote differently, and lecture the other justices.
Did he lecture the other justices?
You don’t think kids already know that the safest place to keep the weed is your asscrack?
If a school official thinks that a kid is carrying contraband, then the proper thing to do is turn them over to the police, whose job it is to find out. If the police think that having ibuprofen (oh, lordy!) is a good reason to do a strip search (which they won’t), then they’ll do one.
Thomas thinks it’s perfectly justifiable for schools to answer the question, “Who has put coke on their pubic hair?”
I award two points to Hentor the Barbarian. 
And that is how it should be done. If there is a suspected cache of drugs, it is a police matter, not a school matter. If they search the back pack, they needed to either let her go or get the cops in to do the search.
In this case, the drugs may not have been illegal for the student to possess, but only against the school’s rules for the student to possess at school. If that is so, can a police officer search when there is no crime with probable cause, only a possible school rule infraction?
I guess that raises the issue of what business the school has in regulating the use of drugs which are perfectly legal for the child to have.
Or more generally, are there any situations in which we want to grant schools the right to strip search children in matters that would not be a violation of the law? Notes in class, copied homework, cheat sheets…
I can’t think of any.
I can honestly say that the former concerns me a great deal more than the latter.