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 prescription-strength 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,” he 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.”
The court’s virtual unanimity was in contrast to the intense oral argument that seemed to exasperate the court’s only female member, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She later said her male colleagues seemed not to appreciate the trauma such a search would have on a developing adolescent.
“They have never been a 13-year-old girl,” she told USA Today when asked about her colleagues’ comments during the arguments. “It’s a very sensitive age for a girl. I didn’t think that my colleagues, some of them, quite understood.”
But Thursday’s opinion recognized just that.
“Changing for gym is getting ready for play,” Souter wrote. “Exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers” and is so degrading that a number of states and school districts have banned strip searches.
Redding said the decision “feels fantastic.” She described herself as shy and “not a good public speaker” but said the long fight “was to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.”
The case, Safford Unified School District #1 vs. 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 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 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.
Other action
Other U.S. Supreme Court decisions Thursday:
• English proficiency — Ruled that Arizona schools should get a fresh legal review on whether to lift a court order requiring changes in a program to educate students who aren’t proficient in English.
• Criminal evidence — Ruled that criminal defendants have a constitutional right to cross-examine forensic analysts who prepare laboratory reports on illegal drugs and other evidence used at trial.
• Right to sue — Ruled that seamen injured on the job may sue for punitive damages when employers refuse to pay for medical care and time off.
