Court tackles legality of strip-searching students

Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing Tuesday to lawyers who were urging a rule against strip-searching students at school.

Instead, most of the justices voiced concern that students could hide dangerous drugs such as crack cocaine or heroin in their clothes.

The case before the court concerns a 13-year-old Arizona girl who was strip-searched in a nurse’s office after a school friend said the girl, Savana Redding, had brought white pills to school. The pills were extra-strength ibuprofen, which is commonly taken for headaches and cramps.

Last year, a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the strip search of Redding was unreasonable and unconstitutional because the pills were ibuprofen. The court said the school officials who ordered the search were liable for damages.

But in their comments and questions, most of the justices signaled they are inclined to overturn that decision.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the school officials should be shielded from being sued because the law governing school searches had not been clear. In the past, the court has said public officials cannot be held liable for damages unless they violate a “clearly established” right.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, though a swing vote on many issues, has voted regularly to give police and school officials greater leeway to search for drugs.

He objected when Adam Wolf, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer for Redding, argued that the strip search was unreasonable because there was no evidence she was hiding anything in her underwear.

“Is the nature of drug irrelevant?” he asked. “What if it was meth to be consumed at noon?”

Wolf insisted that, even in this instance, school officials would not have reasonable grounds for strip-searching a 13-year-old honors student. There was no reason to think she had pills in her underwear, he said.

That reply did not appear to persuade Justice Stephen G. Breyer. It is “a logical thing” for adolescents to hide things, he said. A student might stick something “in their underwear,” he added, provoking laughter when he said that this had happened to him at school. “It’s not beyond human experience.”