Case tests how far schools can go with drug searches

A case involving the search of a 13-year-old will require the Supreme Court to consider how far school officials can go to enforce zero-tolerance drug policies. The New York Times reported on the case as follows:

Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on — black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt — the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade.

Savana Redding, 19, was strip searched six years ago when teachers suspected she had brought prescription pills to school.

An assistant principal, enforcing the school’s antidrug policies, suspected her of having brought prescription-strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating, Ms. Redding said. After she had stripped to her underwear, “they asked me to pull out my bra and move it from side to side,” she said. “They made me open my legs and pull out my underwear.”

Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court, which will hear arguments on April 21.

Ms. Redding was successful in her pursuit of this case in the lower courts, but her case got off to a rocky start. In 2007, a divided three judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld a motion for summary judgment on behalf of school officials in Redding v. Safford Unified School District #1, while noting that the student did not freely agree to this search. She was “embarrassed and scared, but felt [she] would be in more trouble if [she] did not do what they asked.” In her affidavit, Savana described the experience as the most humiliating experience’ of her short life, and felt “violated by the strip search.”

The student and her mother requested the full Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hear their case. In a 6-5 en banc decision, the full Court reversed the earlier panel and found:

On the basis of an uncorroborated tip from the culpable eighth grader, public middle school officials searched futilely for prescription-strength ibuprofen by strip-searching thirteen year-old honor student Savana Redding. We conclude that the school officials violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The strip search of Savana was neither ‘justified at its inception,’ New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341 (1985), nor, as a grossly intrusive search of a middle school girl to locate pills with the potency of two over-the-counter Advil capsules, ‘reasonably related in scope to the circumstances’ giving rise to its initiation. Id.

The opinion writer Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw went on to say: “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights. More than that, it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

Safford United School District appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the Ninth Circuit created a new rule that requires public school officials to have more evidence of illegal possession of drugs or weapons at school than an unproven tip from another student.

The questions presented in the case are:

1. Whether the Fourth Amendment prohibits public school officials from conducting a search of a student suspected of possessing and distributing a prescription drug on campus in violation of school policy; and

2. Whether the Ninth Circuit departed from established principles of qualified immunity in holding that a public school administrator may be liable in a damages lawsuit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for conducting a search of a student suspected of possessing and distributing a prescription drug on campus.

This will be an interesting case to watch and should provide guidance to school districts in setting policy. Fighting drug abuse is a laudable goal, but we must be careful not to infringe upon the constitutional rights of individuals in the process. This case demonstrates how humiliating it can be when a school district crosses the line.

To view the petition filed with the United States Supreme Court, click here. To view the brief filed by the National School Boards Association, click here. To view the brief filed by the Safford United School District, click here. To view the brief of the United States of America, click here.