Gotta admit, after reading the questioning a while back, I didn’t expect this ruling:
In a ruling of interest to educators, parents and students across the country, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights.
The officials in Safford, Ariz., would have been justified in 2003 had they limited their search to the backpack and outer clothing of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade at the time, the court ruled. But in searching her undergarments, they want too far and violated her Fourth Amendment privacy rights, the justices said.
Had Savana been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search, too, might have been justified, the majority said, in an opinion by Justice David H. Souter.
“In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana 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,” the court said. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”
I’m still not thrilled about the notion that had illegal drugs been suspected, it would have been legitimate, but I will take what I can get. I will leave the rest of the analysis to those of you who understand the law, rather than just spout off about it like me.
Oh, and the lone panty-sniffing dissenter? Clarence Thomas.
TenguPhule
But the asshole who ordered the search can’t be held personally liable.
2 Dissenters on that one.
Punchy
Well, there’s your 8-mile wide loophole. Next time the girl who hates you will accuse you of having meth insteada Advil. Legal, bitches! Pedophiles everywhere are frantically filling out principal applications.
gbear
Thomas was the lone jerk on a recent voting rights case too.
jake 4 that 1
Shorter Clarence Thomas: I kan haz cavity search, plz?
People stick contraband lots of places, Thomas wanted to protect the right of schools to insert the long arm of the law wherever it can fit.
[Edit: Emphasis added]
Egypt Steve
Yeah, porn-addict Thomas’ only problem with the case was that the school officials didn’t make a video of the search. Frakin’ pervert.
chopper
i gotta go with stevens and ginsburg on this one. the school should be held liable, precedent and common sense is pretty clear about the constitutionality of the action.
James F. Elliott
The qualified immunity for such egregious conduct is outrageous. While it has been long-settled that minors have limited Fourth Amendment protections, and that those protections are even more strongly curtailed on school campuses, searches must still be conducted by those with statutory authority. For example, mandated reporters — such as school principals! — know that in a case of suspected or reported abuse of a minor, they are NOT allowed to conduct any form of investigation and must leave it to the police and child protective services. Searches for contraband are much the same.
gex
So next time they just need to write in their notes that they suspect other drugs, including illicit drugs. This is how tiny people with a little bit of power make themselves feel better.
In Minnesota, we just made failure to wear a seatbelt a primary offense. The stories of people who were wearing their seatbelts being pulled over by cops who claim they “thought” they weren’t wearing the seatbelts are already piling up.
Hmmm, wonder why the cop is scanning the contents of the entire passenger space instead of just noting the presence of a fastened seatbelt…
Rob
I’m not sure what this ruling means.
Since they can not sue the principal, what’s the difference?
What happens if you search the kid now? Are there any consequences?
Quaker in a Basement
A question for Justice Thomas: If this search was not unreasonable, what would be unreasonable?
Spiffy McBang
I feel it is very important to view situations like these in a calm, rational, and impartial manner, like the Court itself does (or should). And I calmly, rationally, and impartially believe Clarence Thomas needs to get socked in the fucking jaw.
Anyone else notice that of all the times he could stop sniffing Scalia’s shorts, he picks this one?
Comrade Dread
God help me, I think I’ve gone full blown DFH. I agree with Breyer and Ginsburg too.
These jackasses should be held liable. The zero tolerance hysteria regarding drugs has caused people to completely take leave of common sense and any sort of perspective. We should not encourage that mindset with official immunity.
Yeah, I’ve got little doubt that will happen. At least a few police departments have gotten busted for using templates when filling out reports or warrant requests to justify their actions legally.
Evinfuilt
Hollow victory, being all the perp got was a literal wrist slap saying don’t do that again or we’ll have to tell you off again.
J.D. Rhoades
The fact that no evidence was discovered was not indicative that the little girl was innocent, but rather was all the more reason to expand the scope of the warrantless search to the little girl’s underwear.
Jesus.
Kirk Spencer
@jake 4 that 1: Actually, Thomas was going further than that. Simplified, he said schools could do pretty much anything they wanted to students in the pursuit of drug control, and courts needed to quit restraining them.
For those who want it, HERE is the actual ruling. (warning, large pdf)
Grumpy Code Monkey
@jake 4 that 1:
I find that particular imagery … disturbing.
Allan
Thomas’ questions when the case was being heard:
Did you find any stray pubic hairs in her panties?
Would you like to hear about this really great porn flick I rented?
Did you take away her right to vote in future school elections?
TenguPhule
Searching Thomas and finding his stash of kiddy porn, of course.
SATSQ.
LD50
A policeman searching him.
Barry
“Oh, and the lone panty-sniffing dissenter? Clarence Thomas.”
G-d-d-mn that sociopathic f*ck. What’s amazing is that he can be the worst maggot of the Gang of Four, beating out Scalia, Alito *and* Roberts.
zmulls
He’s certainly obsessed with secretions….
CapMidnight
I hope they make him sit next to Justice Sotomayor.
Martin
I agree. Would it have killed anyone to wait until a parent could arrive? What was the rush?
gwangung
I’m going to quote from Pandagon:
And what does that teach kids? Disrespect for authority, particularly when it acts arbitrarily and stupidly. And that working within the system, whether it’s obeying the rules or working on your grades, WILL NOT GET REWARDED.
THAT’S the problem with schools. Not the unions. Brain dead administrators and teachers who figure applying rules with no sense or compassion will prevent them from getting sued and will somehow “get the job done.”
GregB
Thomas was the tool that Bork was just praising to the high heavens.
Authoritarian sociopaths the lot of ’em.
Then again for Thomas, do you really expect quality logic from a conservative affirmative action pick?
-G
SGEW
@CapMidnight: Why do you hate Sotomayor so much?
BombIranForChrist
I, like you, try not to spout off about what I don’t understand, unless if feels really, really good. But there are definitely times when I wonder if the Supreme Court is basically a Random Law Generator. Is there any consistency in it whatsoever? I sometimes wonder if the whole, “Oh, well, experts understand it,” is just bullshit masquerading as esoteric justice.
JGabriel
Still trying to find out who put the pubic hair on his soda can.
.
Bootlegger
@Quaker in a Basement:
This is a “reasonable” argument:
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.
Robin G.
This ruling is nowhere near what it should be, but like John, I’m pleasantly surprised based on what I had expected.
angulimala
@Rhoades
Are you suggesting that school administrators should have entertained the thought that the child who tattled on her might have been wrong, or even lying?
Children lying to get other children in trouble? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Face
As discussed in an earlier thread on this topic, any principal attempting to do this again (while searching for “meth”, or whatever he dreams up) will have to be cognizant of the real threat of vigilante justice being served. I’d like to think the father and several uncles wont take kindly to this, and the principal would face blind rage.
Hopefully, that truism will restrain most perverts.
AkaDad
As he gets older the pubes get younger.
John Cole
Henry Blodget, moral authority.
These people are killing me.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Face: I would be one of those people. As the father of two young daughters, ayone who layed a finger on either of them would be subject to swift and merciless retribution.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Allan:
Well, if Thomas would ever ask any question during oral argument, it would mark some level of improvement.
noncarborundum
@Evinfuilt:
I’d bet against that.
b-psycho
When even Scalia thinks the authorities went too far…
PeopleAreNoDamnGood
It’s really nice to see that Clarence Thomas continues to be a complete sociopathic fucking lunatic. Because, you know, sociopathic fucking lunatics deserve representation on the nation’s highest court.
JL
@John Cole: According to The State
adolphus
@Rob19
I’m not a lawyer, so please correct me if I am wrong. But…
Just because the plaintiffs cannot directly sue the principal or other official, doesn’t mean there are no repercussions. They can still sue the school district and local government and the principle, and principal, actors can be fired, demoted, made to much stalls by their superiors. Just because they cannot be held PERSONALLY responsible doesn’t necessarily mean they will escape unscathed. It isn’t as satisfying, but how much money do you think they would get from the school officials involved? They don’t have malpractice insurance.
Paul L.
OMG, I agree with TenguPhule and @Comrade Dread:
Looks like schools will have to get dogs with supernatural powers to justify the strip searches in the future.
Off topic/Jackolope
Superhero Database ad on Balloon Juice?
CapMidnight
@SGEW:
Aw, I bet she’d have fun! I would quietly flick Advils at him under the desk during proceedings.
JL
I did not read the ruling, but it seems like there is a giant loophole. If a school wants to strip search, what exactly besides common sense will stop them?
The Grand Panjandrum
@John Cole:
Shorter Jennie: I got my own money. Fuck that cheating bastard.
Woody
It helped, certainly that she was 1) white, 2) a ‘good student, and 3) middle class.
Had she been 1) non-white, 2) “goth/gangsta”and/or 3) poor, I am not sanguine that the decision would have been the same…
adolphus
I keep screwing up the blockquotes in the previous comment. I’d edit it, but I am being told I don’t have permission.
My contribution starts at “I’m not a lawyer…”
And I am clearly not a skilled blog commenter. My apologies to Rob and the group.
JL
@adolphus: The NEA will back them. If a teacher gets sued, the union steps in to cover costs.
JL
@The Grand Panjandrum: I found this along with the previous quote at comment 40 at The State.
Dr. Squid
@CapMidnight:
I’d rather Alito sit next to Sotomayor. She was the exact type of person he was agitating to keep out of Princeton.
JL
Except for the girl who was stripped searched receiving some justice, why was this a good result?
joe from Lowell
This ruling is an 8-1 endorsement of the concept of empathy in jurisprudence, as recently articulated by Barack Obama.
From the decision:
The test used to determine whether the student had an expectation of privacy which was violated is an examination of her subjective feelings, not some legalistic formula. They even considered how a person in her particular circumstances (adolescent, being interrogated) is likely to have a different subjective experience from an older person, or an adolescent being exposed changing for gym.
Oh, and btw – the sole woman on the court was the justice who made the rest see how their own experiences in other circumstances are not directly applicable to the question of this search of this girl.
Overall, a pretty convincing thrashing of the arguments conservatives have been making about Sonya Sotomayor and the judicial process in general.
joe from Lowell
JL
Except for the girl who was stripped searched receiving some justice, why was this a good result?
Because it could be your daughter next.
Sasha
The guy that Bork considers the truist jurist on the Court.
Again, thank goodness that Bork got borked.
adolphus
@jl: But Kerry Wilson was the Vice Principal. They are typically management and not members of the union, although in some jurisdiction they teach half time. It is a gray area and I don’t know the details.
I agree that having the official held personally responsible to the family would be best, but contrary to commenters here and elsewhere this doesn’t mean there are NO repercussions for Wilson, the school, the school district, or the local government and there is NO redress for the girl or family. Just not directly from Wilson.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
@Paul L.: As someone who is squicked by the PeTA Pam Anderson ad (and who simply cannot load up this site when working at a client’s place any more), I’m completely fine with the Superheroes database. These are completely unnatural looking women, of course (see also: Liefeld) but the drawing is good (sorry, Rob, you footless wonder) and comics are fun.
gex
@joe from Lowell: Darn. And we just used up all our empathy for Sanford.
RedKitten (formerly Krista - the Canadian one)
Exactly — they could have waited until a parent or legal guardian arrived. And in these new cases, if a student is accused of concealing illegal drugs, if the school has any sense, they’ll be calling the parents AND the police before they even think of searching the student.
GranFalloon
I’m sure the Court left that situation open, given the existing 4th amendment jurisprudence. It is, after all, UNREASONABLE search and seizure, not ANY search and seizure. The Court needs to make clear that there is a sliding scale of reasonableness, lest other courts think that a strip search is, per se, not justified.
Of course, as my astute brethren here note, this will likely be seen as a formulaic excuse – i.e., simply articulate “illegal drugs” and you get a free pass for a strip search. The problem with such jurisprudence and a reasonableness standard is that it inherently requires “prudence” and “reasonableness.” What a great society it would be if we really could exercise that. Instead, our “lowest common denominator” thinking inspires us to resort to such formulaic, meaningless gestures.
Think I’m overstating it? 4th Amendment requires notice and opportunity to consent . . . just watch a COPS show – specifically, how the say “POLICE, OPEN THE DOOR, WE HAVE A WARRANT” as 15 officers simultaneously break down the door, occasionally of the wrong house. Why? Because SCOTUS never articulated a “time lag” required and, without that, it appears that knock and announce can be simultaneous with entry, or a millisecond before. I mean, why wouldn’t they, right? Why give citizens any opportunities the law doesn’t SPECIFICALLY REQUIRE?
Comrade Dread
If you really want to have a good ol’ fashioned dive in the depths of insanity/stupidity, you should check out Michelle Bachmann’s interview with Fox today where she tried to tie the upcoming census with the specter of interment camps.
Tsulagi
And the surprise factor would be?
Hard to imagine the rage I would feel if my daughter came home from school after being strip searched because some brain-dead sanctimonious zero-tolerance idiot was looking for Motrin. Their world would change.
Don’t care if they’re looking for legal or illegal drugs, or a remote detonator for the ticking time bomb they hear in their head, if they want to strip search, school employees should be required to get a warrant providing probable cause to a judge.
REN
@ The Grand Panjandrum
I am actually a very mild-mannered chap, but I’m with you. That principle or any other who attempted such behavior with one of my daughters, would not like to see me coming in his direction. Sometimes and some offences call for more direct action than a court case which lasts for six years.
Lee
Clarence Thomas is really all over the place with his decisions.
There are many times he really tries to restrain the power of the state (e.g. he thought the Commerce Clause did not cover someone who grew their own pot for medical consumption).
Gonzales v. Raich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich
Then he comes out with this shit.
J.D. Rhoades
I do a lot of defense work in juvenile court. I wish I could tell you some of the stories I have about the insanity caused by “zero tolerance” policies, and how indignant school officials get when their absolute authority is questioned and/or their bullshit cases get thrown out for lack of evidence.
And don’t get me started on what, other than suspected drug possession, constitutes a “crime” in school these days.
Michael
My kids have long been under strict orders to resist such a search violently, if need be, and that we’d back them up 100%.
The Grand Panjandrum
@REN: I’m pretty laid back myself, but when it comes to my kids I would not hesitate to defend them. OTH I am not the kind of parent who goes and threatens a teacher if my child were failing in school. If they are failing that is on me and my child. I guess my point is that I am not not one of the helicopter parents hovering over their children and not allowing them to fail or go through a rough patch. But I do draw a very bright line at physical abuse and violation.
Betsy
@ Everyone asking what good is it if the perps can’t be sued:
The school (or the school district) can still be sued. Just not the actors themselves. School districts often go to great lengths to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit, and I imagine (hope?) that in the face of this ruling, they will adjust their policies accordingly.
I agree with Ginsberg and Stevens (?) that I think the perps should be liable too. But the decision is not completely without teeth.
Emma Anne
This isn’t my field and law school was a long time ago, but this ruling is better than it sounds (going by the summary above – I haven’t read the opinion). The holding (the part that makes law) is that this search was unreasonable. There is dicta (reasoning and comments not required for the holding) that other factors, like dangerous illegal drugs, *might* have made it reasonable.
Basically the court is saying, “come on, this search doesn’t even *pretend* to have factors arguing for reasonableness. The drugs weren’t even dangerous.”
If I am a lawyer for a school district I don’t read this mean that you can simply say you suspect illegal drugs and get a free pass. I’ll be telling the principals that they had better have a good reason, preferable based on actual danger to other students, before they go beyond the backpack and the outer clothing.
Erik Vanderhoff
Oh, dude, we must talk.
ShortWoman
The way I read it, one of the factors was that they didn’t even bother to call the girl’s parents. That has always been something that didn’t make sense: how was it so important that she be strip searched, but not important enough to call her parents or (if it had been illegal drugs/weapons) the cops?
Sorry, if it had been my kid, that would have been my first question.
Emma Anne
@The Grand Panjandrum:
What are you talking about here? Violence? Because I think your daughters would find having their dad in jail to be far worse than the search. Maybe I am taking an off-hand comment too seriously, but I am uncomfortable with the vigilante energy here.
J.D. Rhoades
The dirty little secret is, there’s a substantial cohort of teachers and a larger one of school administrators who openly resent the “interference” of parents when it comes to how their children are dealt with.
To be fair, considering the fuckwittedness of some parents, they’re not totally without justification. Still, there’s a limit, and getting– literally– into a teenager’s panties is way the hell over it.
REN
@ The Grand Panjandrum
Agree with every word. Good parenting requires the allowance of failure. It’s one of the most effective ways that human beings learn.
jenniebee
It’s better than I was hoping for, but it still says it’s ok to strip a student down to their underwear, just not to require them to shake the underwear out.
I’m kind of curious about how this would play if the student in question was a religious conservative with strict ideas about modesty. If she was wearing Mormon underwear, for instance. Or a Lubuvitch Jew going to a public school, if such a thing actually happened, asked to remove some of his/her layers – bad news, that.
I also wonder how it would have played out had Savanna refused to take off her clothes or shake out her underwear and been disciplined for it.
...now I try to be amused
What, Thomas doesn’t always vote with Scalia? I’ll be damned.
Mike G
Officials had searched the girl’s backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. “It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place she thought no one would look,” Thomas said.
Or, you know, the backpack was empty because she DIDN’T FUCKING HAVE ANY PILLS.
Thomas is a creepy authoritarian fucktard. Of course these smug assholes know the surveillance state will never be turned on Important People like them. Cue flag-waving and genuflecting about ‘Freedom’.
Alan
For the benefit of non-lawyers (and because some people raised questions that I did not see answered) — “qualified immunity” is a legal doctrine which says that a public official cannot be held liable for violating someone’s civil rights if the civil right in question was not clearly established at the time it was violated. The theory behind it is that taxpayers should not be liable for the good faith mistakes of officials in situations where the relevant law is unclear. In this case, the Court decided (7-2) that prior case law had no clearly established that school officials could not conduct a search of this type under these circumstances, and so the taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay out. If, in the future, school officials strip search a kid under comparable circumstances, they will be presumed to know that this case is on the books, and the school can be held liable. However, if (as some folks have suggested) the school strip searches a kid for “dangerous drugs” of some sort, that particular issue has not yet been decided and, even if the Supreme Court later holds such searches to also be constitutional, qualified immunity will still apply. Technically, the persons who conducted the search might be personally liable in their individual (as opposed to official) capacities, but (a) it is usually hard to prove that such persons were acting as individuals rather than acting as part of their jobs and (b) individual school teachers rarely have enough money to make such a suit worthwhile to any lawyer.
Stefan
Clarence: “It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place she thought no one would look,”
So because no evidence was found in the backpack, that was all the more reason to look in her underwear? By that reasoning, since they didn’t find any drugs in her underwear, isn’t it then reasonable to search the little girl’s vagina?
There’s literally no end to what you can justify with that “the absence of evidence is evidence of hidden evidence” reasoning.
Don
The thing that makes me most insane about Thomas’ dissent is that he never once acknowledges the option to call the police and/or the parents. It’s lazy and sloppy binary thinking.
It’s particularly horrific because he takes time in his dissent to point out that the drugs found (on the other student) were prescription and that the state law in this case made possession of prescription drugs without a valid prescription a crime in and of itself. So he’s pointed out that there’s a clear and compelling reason to call the cops but never acknowledges that deciding if this search was Reasonable must include the fact that they had that option open to them.
oh really
That’s because insanity trumps ideology.
Michael
Speaking just for me, the answer is “yes”.
As a lawyer, I know just how subservient the judiciary is to the local powers that be. Administrators are not restrained by the limp and feeble “so called” civil rights protections that conservative Federalist Society judges have allowed us to retain, and are thus have few legal consequences to fear from whatever neglectful or malicious conduct gets exposed after all the damage control.
The potential for an ass kicking that causes missing teeth and broken bones does seem to cause restraint.
Ever notice that they seem to feel the potential for personal consequences in an inner city school, and tend to moderate their conduct there?
asiangrrlMN
They did call the parents. After they searched. Yeah, that’s the way to do it, fellows. Stupid idiots. If I had children, I would teach them to dissent rather noisily and insist that the principal call me. This is just insane.
As for putting Sotomayor next to one of the good ol’ boys, I like her too much to do that to her. I think she and Ginsberg should sit next to each other. Then, every once in awhile, they should put their heads together, mutter something behind their hands, then guffaw while looking in the direction of one of the good ol’ boys. Heh.
REN
@ Michael
Advocating violence is not my first or even 20th instinct, but something tells me that looking at a crooked nose in the mirror for the rest of his life,while not causing any serious damage, would have had a more immediate and lasting restraining effect on Mr. vice principal than this weak kneed court decision six years after the fact.
Mino
When I heard the ruling was 8-1, I knew exactly who the dissenter was.
tripletee (formerly tBone)
@Paul L.:
After he got such a positive reaction to Three-Armed Pam, John decided to devote that entire sidebar to ginormous, unnatural gravity-defying boobs.
mclaren
Lots of people here claiming they would exact “swift retribution” if their daughter got strip-searched in school.
Schools are prisons nowadays. Locked steel doors, metal detectors, armed guards. If your daughter got strip-searched and you marched down to your local school with a gun or a baseball bat, you’d be shot dead by the armed guards long before you could break in. So exactly how would you people exact “swift retribution”?
When schools become prisons, prison rape and other abuses are the predictable outcome. These cavity searches are mild. Look for a massive escalation soon: multiple simultaneous cavity searches of underage girls stripped naked in public. It will be legal, of course, because the thugs who perpetrate the sex crime will claim they were looking for “illegal drugs.”
As for the fool who claimed his children were under strict orders to resist such cavity searches “violently,” you’ve just condemned your child to death. What do you think goes on inside a prison? If any kid lifted a finger to physically resist such cavity searches, she’d be slammed to the ground by 5 burly guards and then tased to death. Schools are prisons run by sociopaths today.
There’s a solution: don’t send you kids to prison. We all know what happens in prison. Just don’t do it. Home school your children. If you make the horrible mistake of sending ’em to a public school, you should expect your kid to get brutalized and abused and sadistically assaulted and sexually humiliated in the same way that we expect inmates in prisons to get brutalized and abused and sadistically assaulted and sexually humiliated.
gwangung
@mclaren:
dude. ya gotta do better. At least it’s not too recycled, but it really should have to do with the real world.
D-. mclaren can do better.
lee
As a father of 2 girls and a Marine, the amount of violence I would bring to school administrators that did this to either of my girls would make front page headlines.
I’m in Texas we can still use the “He deserved to be killed” defense.
Edit to a post right above:
I would not need to bring a weapon.