U.S. Supreme Court finds strip search of 13-year-old student Savana Redding violated her Fourth Amendment rights.
In an 8-1 decision authored by retiring Justice Dave Souter, the U.S. Supreme Court has found that the strip search of a then 13-year-old Arizona student violated her Fourth Amendment* rights to privacy. The case involved an October 2003 incident at a school in Safford, Arizona, when the student, Savana Redding, was escorted from her middle school classroom by the school’s assistant principal, Kerry Wilson. There Redding was told by Wilson that she was suspected of providing contraband (in this case, prescription-strength ibuprofen) to other students. Savana denied she was distributing pills but allowed him to search her
belongings.
But after Wilson and an assistant found nothing in the student’s backpack, he told his female assistant to take Redding to the nurse’s office, where an invasive strip search of her bra and pelvic area was conducted–still with no contraband being found.
Savana’s mother sued the school district, Wilson, and others involved in the search. Issues of qualified immunity for the individual officials involved in the search were at issue in the case and resolved in favor of the officials. The issue of the school district’s liability was remanded back to the trial court.
Still, the 8-1 decision appears to be an important clarification by the court of when strip searches of students are defensible in light of the students’ Fourth Amendment protections and the leeway previous court rulings have given to school administrators under a “reasonable suspicion standard.”
While the Supreme Court found that Wilson and his assistants had “sufficient suspicion” to examine Savana’s backpack and outer clothing, they didn’t have “sufficient suspicion to warrant extending the search to the point of making Savana pull out her underwear.”
The content of the suspicion, Souter’s majority decision said, “failed to match the degree of intrusion.”
To read the New York Times article on today’s decision, go here.
*The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
