Reading the first sentence of this Washington Post article, we get what seems like good news:
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 yesterday.
Sadly, the court’s decision makes it clear that strip-searching kids is a-okay, as long as it’s a more dangerous drug they’re looking for:
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 H. 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.”
The incident is a pretty horrendous abuse of power:
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.
Ginsburg and Justice 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.
I’m very troubled by the fact that the teacher isn’t being held personally liable. She did something to a 13 year-old kid which must have felt like sexual assault, and shouldn’t be able to hide behind the fact that she was acting in an official capacity. This is something which should never happen, no matter how dangerous the drug they’re looking for.
What would happen to this school in a market education system? Parents would see the principal for the quasi-rapist she is and vote with their feet. Public school systems everywhere are a massive failure. Presently, only the relatively rich have the option of shopping around for better alternatives. The poor can’t afford to pay twice for their kids’ education and are forced to live with the inferior product.
My view is that the government should get out of education altogether – including the funding – but I understand the concern of some folks that this would lower opportunities for the poor (I don’t agree with them, but I understand them). A school voucher system dominates a state-run education system on every relevant dimension, and the only reason I can see for anyone preferring government provision is a kneejerk opposition to markets.
The main message we need to communicate: Statist education harms children. To me, arguments about the greater cost-effectiveness of competitive schooling come a very distant second in terms of importance.
Brad Taylor is a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. He blogs at 
This is an ubelievable abuse of power! What’s next.. Cavity searches for cigarettes? If I had children, I wouldn’t want them in a school presided over by this principal.
Don’t they make people who *aren’t* in “Positions of Authority” register as Sex Offenders for things like this?
I’m so glad my only child is grown now, and out of the reach of these grubby-handed freaks. . . and I will do everything in my power to convince her to HomeSchool. . .
From the infamous “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case to this more recent injustice, it’s clear that if you give the school authoritahs an inch, they’ll overstep any reasonable bounds. The net of the ruling is: No, the bureaucrats really shouldn’t be strip searching your kid, but if they do, and plead ignorance of the law, there’s not a damn thing you can (legally) do about it.
Consider the increasingly common phenomenon of education bureaucrats confiscating your child’s mobile phone. That is a reasonable act if justified for the purposes of removing a distraction from the classroom.
But they don’t stop there.
After seizure, the school authoritiahs have a habit of searching its contents and teens have been charged with creating/possessing/transmitting child porn as a result. (aka: “sexting”)
If those charges are legit, why not charge the bureaucrats similarly? The fact that the phone was no longer a classroom distraction is a good indication that those pervs invaded the intellectual property rights of the kid for the pre-meditated purpose of viewing “child pornography.
This is another example of totalitarianism. People, if you really care about your children do not send them to public school or anything that resembles a public school for that matter. Show them how to extract knowledge for themselves. Don’t worry, your children not only will be more well behaved than public school products, but they will not be useless automatons.