Mar 24th, 2009
Posted by Dan Berger, Drug Law Reform Project at 5:07pm	Criminal Law Reform

Strip-Search First, Ask Questions Later

The New York Times, in a front-page article today, takes an in-depth look at Redding v. Safford, an ACLU case, and one of the most appalling items on the Supreme Court's docket this term. Savana Redding, a then 13-year-old eighth-grade honor student, was strip-searched by school officials based on nothing more than a classmate's claim that Redding had given her prescription strength ibuprofen – the equivalent of two over-the-counter Advil capsules. The school made no attempt to corroborate the accusation, and had no further evidence that Redding was in possession of ibuprofen or that she might be concealing something in her undergarments. Without taking the most basic step of contacting her mother, school officials forced Redding to strip to her underwear and then to expose her bare breasts and genitalia.

The fact that no ibuprofen pills were uncovered seems almost beside the point. As the majority opinion in the case from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals proclaimed, "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." Or, to put it less eloquently: You can't strip search an adolescent student just because a classmate said she gave them Advil.

Or can you? The Supreme Court will soon weigh in, reviewing the 9th Circuit's ruling in Redding's favor, and opening up the possibility that strip searches could soon become a much more frequent occurrence in America's classrooms. Arguments in the case is set for April 21. Stay tuned.

Permalink |	Criminal Law Reform

1. tim Says:
   Mar 24th, 2009 at 4:50pm

   Are we in Russia ? In God We Trust! To the people who did this to this little girl. Be glad that this was not my little girl! The person or persons who did this to that lttile girl would have been strip-down by me and shown to all in that school. Who on gods green earth gave them the right to judge and executioner of this little girl. The ACLU would of been helping me out in the case PARENT(DELIVERS OWN BRAND OF JUSTICE)v.STAFFORD..... i hope that little girl is ok!! ACLU please don't stop the good fight. What ever it cost please don't let them do this agian to anyone person much less a little child.

2. Karen Says:
   Mar 24th, 2009 at 5:49pm

   Arizona's law on drugs on school property ( 13-3411. Possession, use, sale or transfer of marijuana, peyote, prescription drugs, dangerous drugs or narcotic drugs or manufacture of dangerous drugs in a drug free school zone; violation; classification; definitions)

   Makes only the following illegal:

   A. It is unlawful for a person to do any of the following:

   1. Intentionally be present in a drug free school zone to sell or transfer marijuana, peyote, prescription-only drugs, dangerous drugs or narcotic drugs.

   2. Possess or use marijuana, peyote, dangerous drugs or narcotic drugs in a drug free school zone.

   3. Manufacture dangerous drugs in a drug free school zone.

   No one alleged the plaintiff was on school property for the purpose of distibuting drugs -- she was there as a student. Given that my bottle of ibuprofen here in my house says to take two 200mg tablets, it really cannot be that it is a "dangerous drug."

   Furthermore, the only "empowerment" of school officials in the statutes is to be MANDATE to call the police if they suspect a violation of the law:

   F. All school personnel who observe a violation of this section shall immediately report the violation to a school administrator. The administrator shall immediately report the violation to a peace officer. It is unlawful for any school personnel or school administrator to fail to report a violation as prescribed in this section.

   Unless this law was changed after this incident, it seems to me that the school employees' actions were clearly illegal -- they were obligated to call the police, not play the keystone cops and molest young girls. that alone ought to put them on notice and kill any immunity they claim to have.

3. Karen Says:
   Mar 24th, 2009 at 6:21pm

   OK, now I have read the school boards brief. the school policy is broader than the statute (and it must be that the pervs didn't think the statute was violated, or else they would have called the cops, per the law). but the school policy only provides for the student to be removed from school property and prosecuted (which wasn't going to happen here).

   "sTUDENTS IN VIOLATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH SHALL BE SUBJECT TO REMOVAL FROM SCHOOL PROPERTY AND SHALL BE SUBJECT TO PROSECUTION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS
   OF THE LAW. sTUDENTS ATTENDING SCHOOL IN THE dISTRICT WHO ARE IN VIOLATION OF THE PROVISIONS OF THIS POLICY
   SHALL BE SUBJECT TO DISCIPLINARY ACTIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PROVISIONS OF SCHOOL RULES
   AND⁄OR REGULATIONS"

   So where on earth did Mr. Wilson get the idea that he had the right to order the sexual assault of a young girl?

4. Karen Says:
   Mar 24th, 2009 at 6:41pm

   I think the appropriate standard is well set forth in Arizona law. If the school believes the student has violated criminal law, it is obligated to turn over the matter to law enforcement. If mere school policy has been violated, the school is authorized to enforce its policies through its disciplinary processes, including removal and expulsion. the school does not get "police powers" including strip searches to enforce school policies.

5. Hawaiian style Says:
   Mar 25th, 2009 at 1:09pm

   America the land of the free and the home of the brave.

   Obviously the school was worried about National Security, or maybe they thought the girl was going to fly to someplace that afternoon.

   I wonder, if the Federal Government was not playing fast and loose with our rights; If it had not created a WAR on terror Conn job, which has changed our tolerance for the invasion of our Constitutional rights, would the American public tolerate this stuff?

   Are we being worn down to accept such intolerable actions, or think if we are in a position of authority we can do this?

   Intolerable.

6. Paen Says:
   Mar 25th, 2009 at 1:10pm

   Once again the drug warriors display a total lack of respect for fundemental human rights.I hope all officials involved get the punishment they deserve.

7. ggg Says:
   Mar 26th, 2009 at 10:19am

   George Washington
   "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action”.

   P.J. O'Rouke
   When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

   Jean-Baptiste Say
   [The different ways of producing] all consist in taking a product in one state and putting it into another in which it has more utility and value … in one way or another, from the moment that one creates or augments the utility of things, one augments their value, one is exercising an industry, one is producing wealth……The productive power of industry is limited only by ignorance and by the bad administration of states. Spread enlightenment and improve governments, or, rather, prevent them from doing harm; and there will be no limit that can be assigned to the multiplication of wealth…..But personal interest is no longer a safe criterion if individual interests are not left to counteract and control each other. If one individual, or one class, can call in the aid of authority (governments) to ward off the effects of competition, it acquires a privilege and at the cost of the whole community; it can then make sure of profits not altogether due to the productive services rendered, but composed in part of an actual tax upon consumers for its private profit; which tax it commonly shares with the authority that thus unjustly lends its support. The legislative body has great difficulty in resisting the importunate demands for this kind of privileges; the applicants are the producers that are to benefit thereby, who can represent with much plausibility that their own gains are a gain to the industrious classes, and to the nation at large, their workmen and themselves being members of the industrious classes, and of the nation.

   Comte
   ….ambition, so fertile in happy results in ordinary labor, is here a principle of ruin; and the more a public functionary wishes to progress in the profession he has taken up, the more he tends, as is natural, to raise and increase his profits, the more he becomes a burden to the society that pays him.

   What must never be lost sight of is that a public functionary, in his capacity as functionary, produces absolutely nothing; that on the contrary, he exists only on the products of the industrious class; and that he can consume nothing that has not been taken from the producers.

   Augustin Thierry
   Government should be good for the liberty of the governed, and that is when it governs to the least possible degree. It should be good for the wealth of the nation, and that is when it acts as little as possible upon the labor that produces it and when it consumes as little as possible. It should be good for the public security, and that is when it protects as much as possible, provided that the protection does not cost more than it brings in…. It is in losing their powers of action that governments improve. Each time that the governed gain space, there is progress.

   William Leggett
   Have we not, too, our privileged orders? our scrip nobility? aristocrats, clothed with special immunities, who control, indirectly, but certainly, the power of the state, monopolize the most copious source of pecuniary profit, and wring the very crust from the hand of toil? Have we not, in short, like the wretched serfs of Europe, our (own) lordly masters…? If any man doubts how these questions should be answered, let him walk through Wall-Street.

   The American aristocracy naturally favored a strong government, including control of the banking system. Leggett, in contrast, demanded "the absolute separation of government from the banking and credit system."

   John C. Calhoun
   .. in his “Disquisition on Government”, focused attention on the taxing powers of the state, "the necessary result of which is to divide the community into two great classes: one consisting of those who in reality pay the taxes, and of course bear exclusively the burthen of supporting the government; and the other of those who are the recipients of their proceeds through disbursements, and who are, in fact, supported by the government; or, in fewer words, to divide it into tax-payers and tax-consumers. But the effect of this is to place them in antagonistic relations in reference to the fiscal action of the government and the entire course of policy therewith connected.

   John Quincy Adams similarly in 1821, stated the following about America:
   “She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... [America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty.”

   Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, acquaintance of Confucius in the late sixth century BC;
   Government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers."

   "Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves…."

   Chuang-tzu
   "There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success]." In fact, the world simply "does not need governing; in fact it should not be governed." Chuang-tzu was also the first to work out the idea of "spontaneous order," developed particularly by Proudhon in the nineteenth and by F. A. Hayek of the Austrian School in the twentieth Century: "Good order results spontaneously when things are let alone."

   Chuang-tzu, moreover, was perhaps the first theorist to see the State as a brigand writ large: "A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a State." Thus the only difference between State rulers and out-and-out robber chieftains is the size of their depredations. This theme of ruler-as-robber was to be repeated, independently of course, by Cicero and then by St. Augustine and other Christian thinkers in the Middle Ages.

   James Madison, the principal architect of the U.S. Constitution, noted in 1795:
   “Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies. From these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, debts and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

8. Hawaiian style Says:
   Mar 27th, 2009 at 12:25pm

   At one time we used to punish people by putting them in the stocks in the public square.

   In this case I suggest we strip the perpetrators first and then put them in the stocks. Perhaps a little honey put on them to attract ants etc. would help.

   And finally they should be fired from their job. Certainly such a monstrous lack of judgment cannot be trusted to teach and form our youth. Their actions here are in reality a form of rape.

9. Dr Shawna Murray MD Says:
   Mar 27th, 2009 at 2:11pm

   STOP THE POLICE STATE.

10. Njal Says:
    Mar 30th, 2009 at 11:53am

    So we pay taxes to have public school officials sexually harass/assault children under the pretense of protecting them from the horrors of Ibuprofen? They thought this was going to be okay?

    A nude search in school?
    In America?

11. Kay Sieverding Says:
    Apr 1st, 2009 at 8:22am

    I was strip searched because the Marshals in Colorado sent a fax saying I was to be put on a felony hold. However, I wasn't accused of a felony and I wasn't accused of a misdemeanor either. The court clerk who presided over the only hearing said that whatever a federal judge wants to have happen to a person, in this case former judge Naughty Nottingham, is what will happen. The Assistant U.S. Attorney said that the government isn't a party to this.

    If I had been strip searched by non government employees instead of government employees it would have been defined as assault.

12. Bill B. Says:
    Apr 8th, 2009 at 7:08pm

    Why doesn't the ACLU provide a way for us to easily email or fax out opinions to Supreme And Appellate Court judges as you do for our elected officials.

    Since these judges are not elected, our opinions are even more important.

    These guys are not gods and require all the help they can get/

13. f Says:
    Apr 18th, 2009 at 7:41am

    WELL ACLU MEMBERS AGAIN YOU HAVE PROVED TO BE IDIOTS AGAIN ! SO WHAT SHE WAS STRIPED SEARHED. SHE WAS PROPABLY SELLING DRUGS TO ACLU FAMILY MEMBERS WHICH I THINK ARE ALL ON DRUGS (HONOR STUDENT MY ASS)FUCK THE ACLU

14. John Says:
    Jul 7th, 2009 at 4:35am

    Good discussion!