6 years ago, Savannah Redding, was a student at a Safford Middle School in Arizona. A fellow student had come to the school office with his mother and notified the vice principal that he had received a pill from a fellow classmate and had suffered an adverse reaction. Further, he had information that the classmate and some of her friends intended to take the pills in a concerted action at lunch time that day. The vice-principal then questioned the other student and found her to have the ibuprofen and Naprosyn in her pockets and to have been in constructive possession of a day planner that was found to contain various contraband, including a cigarette and several knifes. That student (who was also strip searched) then indicated that she had received the medicine from Savannah but denied any knowledge of the day planner's contents. The principal then had Savannah brought to the school office and after asking several questions (during which Savannah said she loaned the planner to her friend) asked the school nurse and another woman to take Savannah into another room where she was made to strip down to her bra and panties and briefly exposed her privates to demonstrate that she was not hiding pills in her undergarments. Savannah's mother was not called prior to the principal's actions and Savannah was made to wait for 2 and a half more hours in the office while school personnel continued to investigate. When Savannah's mother complained about his actions, the vice-principal is reported to have said that the strip search was no big deal because no pills were found. Savannah claimed to have suffered extreme embarrassment and subsequently transferred to another school.

The procedural posture of the case was on Redding's appeal of the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the school system. A 3 judge appellate panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal but on rehearing, en banc, [ a fancy Latin term meaning the entire 11 members of the appeals court reconsidered the case) the court split 6-5 in overturning the district judge's opinon. Ms. Redding brought her case under Section 1983 of Title 42 of the U.S. Code. Section 1983 suits are typically brought when there is an alleged violation of a widely known constitutional provision and the defendant is acting in an official capacity as part of a governmental organization. While there were other state or federal claims sued upon, at issue is whether the strip search violated Savannah's rights under the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guaranties citizens the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

Prior case law holds that students do not enjoy the same level of protection from searches afforded to adults while they are on school property or attending a school sponsored function such as a prom or football game. The Supreme Court has established a test of the reasonableness of searches which seeks to balance a school system's need to keep its students safe and afford some protection of the privacy of students. The last time the Supreme Court took up the issue of student searches it held that a school official need only have a reasonable basis to believe a search is necessary but the facts in that case only involved the searching of a student's purse. The Supreme Court established a 2 part test to guide the lower courts in addressing the reasonableness of student searches focused on the facts and inferences known to the school administrator at the beginning of the search and whether the "scope" of the search was reasonable to the policy objectives the school was seeking to enforce.

We are now several decades into the so called War on Drugs in which the federal and state courts have been inundated by a tremendous number of cases seeking to test various aspects of law. I find myself rejecting what I see as a one-sided approach which focuses on trying to lock up as many users and dealers as possible but skimping on treatment alternatives and dealing with the issue as a major health epidemic.

In my opinion, the War on Drugs has been a major factor in a trend away from the expansive view constitutional protections in favor of the individual which were a hallmark of the Supreme Court under the direction of Chief Justice Earl Warren. In the decades since his tenure, especially as more "conservative" members have been appointed, the outcome in many civil and criminal cases has favored the restriction of civil rights upon which money damages are awarded and the decrease in rights afforded to criminal defendants. As an example, the Court recently held that the so called Exclusionary Rule, (which limits the admissibility of evidence obtained in connection with some prior police misconduct, such as a seizure without a warrant) need not necessarily be applied if the police misconduct was inadvertent and the suppression of evidence at trial would be unlikely to modify future police investigatory procedures. I only cite this as an example as I tend to think that particular ruling strikes a common sense approach and may be well founded (although potentially subject to less discriminating use by prosecutors than the Supreme Court intends) as it is clearly a change from the "bright line tests" favored by the Warren Court. [that issue, and the cultural ramifications as expressed in popular movies such as the Dirty Harry flicks may be one which I'll address in a subsequent post]

I also hope the Supreme Court will use this opportunity to provide more procedural and substantive protections to students and better guidance to school administrators of the steps necessary to be taken prior to employing the extreme practice of strip searches as well as to provide a more rational basis for the country to examine the negative impact that the one-sided approach to combating illegal drug use has had on our country's civic foundations. I'm expecting a 5-4 decision. I'm just hoping to find out that at least 1 of the conservatives on the Supreme Court can appreciate how humiliating this strip search was and try and place themselves in this girl's shoes.