So the tale of Savana Redding continues, after the Ninth Circuit *en banc * agreed that school officials strip searching a thirteen year old honors student to see if she had Motrin (prescription strength Ibuprofen) based on the say so of a kid who was in real trouble, may have been a bit excessive.
So I am sincerely hoping the US Supreme Court granted certiorari in order to curb the excesses that public schools have committed under the zero tolerance policies. I agree it is important to keep childern safe, but strip searching a thirteen year old seeking Ibuprofen!! That is just wrong, the same as using K9 dogs to subdue middle schoolers for locker searches, I hope we finally recognize that although schools do have to have some latitude to search for contraband, this is ridiculous.
What’s your argument? That schools shouldn’t be strip-searching teenagers for harmless medications or use dogs to intimidate them during other invasions of their privacy?
Okay - I’m totally with you, dude. Let the debates begin! Sounds more like a weak pitting than an invitation for reasonable discussion.
I’m trying to think of any reason a male principal would decide it would be okay to be present for the strip search a 13-year-old girl, and I’m not coming up with anything except that he wanted to see her naked.
Yeah. The story, especially where the male principal was present. Usually it’s considered protocol to provide a link. I realize it’s not RickJay’s thread, but he was the first to mention it.
Sorry, maybe my post wasn’t clear, but basically there is a reason this is at the Supreme Court level, and that is that the lower court, and the appeal court initially upheld the strip search as legal. This can only lead me to believe that there are people out there who support this type of action, or else how can it be happening and be upheld by courts as legal and necessary to keep the children safe.
So the debate is how far is too far to enforce zero tolerance policies, and should schoolchildren be given more rights than they currently seem to enjoy vis a vis the fourth amendment (as applied via the fourteenth).
A Google of “Savanna Redding” will yield more hits and sources than you can count. However, on further investigation, I misread the girl’s deposition. The principal was not present during the strip search; I had mixed him up with another member of the staff.
The Supreme Court accepting the case doesn’t mean the en banc appeal decision was wrong, necessarily. It could mean it was right, and they want to make it the law of the land. The en banc appeals court overruled the initial panel appeal. Losing an appeal means the court below made a mistake. So, until the Supreme Court rules, under current Fourth Amendment law, you cannot strip search a student for drugs based on an uncorroborated tip that the student had drugs at some unknown time in some unknown place.
There are, of course, lots of people out there who support giving principals that kind of power.
There were two big issues in this case: was the search illegal? And was the principal personally liable for it? I suspect that the Supreme Court will overturn the second part, not the first. But we’ll see. I suspect that this will not be a good decision for the Fourth Amendment.
I think that this case perfectly points out the problem with a reasonable standard. Five of the judges on the appeals court thought that the principal was acting reasonably. Six did not. If 5 out of 11 judges think that your actions are reasonable, couldn’t a common man reasonably expect to think that as well? Isn’t that what the standard is supposed to be?
Hoping the courts will curb abuses of power in public schools is a waste of time. Public schools are part of the government and the courts are part of the government. The government protects its own. I obviously can’t say how the Supreme Court will rule in this particular case, but broadly speaking it’s obvious that they’ll continue to deny basic civil rights to public school students.
The problem is pretty simple. Most parents would not want their 13-year-old (or any other year-old) to be treated like this. However, the parents have no direct authority over the school district. All they can do is elect politicians and hope that the politicians will reign in abuses of power. The only other hypothetical way for parents to exercise power is to pull their kids out of public school in response to this abuse. For most parents, that’s simply not possible because private schools are too expensive.
School choice would solve this problem (any many others) is one fell swoop.
This is a transparent attempt to shoehorn your own pet agenda into an issue where it doesn’t make any sense.
First, and perhaps most importantly, private schools tend to be worse about this kind of thing than public schools. As they are not constrained by the Fourth Amendment, some private schools institute random drug testing of the entire student body and other invasive measures that public schools cannot. This despite the fact that private school students tend to be richer and more well-connnected than public school students. Imagine the excesses if they schools had to deal with the problems public schools face. Whereas the act in question here was unconstitutional in a public school, that would not have been the case in a private school.
Second, the notion that the Supreme Court, as an institution, is necessarily deferential to government abuse of power is just ignorant. Most of the civil liberties you now enjoy were not enjoyed before the Supreme Court carved them out–largely in the last 60 years.
Third, public schools almost everywhere in the country are governed by an elected board. That board is frequently composed of, you guessed it, parents. You can’t get much more direct governance than that. The power parents have over private schools (choosing to enroll or remove their children) is shared by parents in many public schools, but public school parents retain the huge additional power of electing those who govern public schools.
I think the Supreme Court will probably overrule the Ninth Circuit on the qualified immunity aspect of the case. I find that disappointing, but I think reasonable minds can disagree. It will hardly be an example of the government protecting its own, or denying constitutional protections to public school students. And it is miles from providing evidence that private schools would be better for student rights.