taradinoc: 9th Circuit OKs strip-searching 13 year olds for Advil

Taradino C. (

taradinoc) wrote,
@ 2007-10-01 20:14:00

Entry tags:

politics

9th Circuit OKs strip-searching 13 year olds for Advil
Four years ago, school officials forced a 13 year old girl to remove her clothes because she was suspected of possessing ibuprofen. Now, the Ninth Circuit says they acted appropriately. More over on my fancy blog.

Update: See also this NYRA blog post, which sums it up thusly:

Those in charge think they can get away with treating teenagers so carelessly because, really, they don’t consider them their equals. They believe them to be lesser beings over whom they must dominate. They use the excuse that it’s for their own good, but who was this benefiting? If the girl had the ibuprofen, who is she harming? Theoretically, she could have taken the whole bottle if she wanted to kill herself, but that’s a stupid excuse, since there are so many other ways to kill yourself. Could she have given some to a student who was allergic or otherwise could not have it? Well, it’s up to that student to know better. That isn’t a terribly hard concept for a 13-year-old to grasp. Then again, it does seem a hard concept for their adult overlords to grasp.

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geminiwench
2007-10-02 04:39 am UTC (link)

Blogspot? NOOOO!

Why??

What is the law the school nurse and principal were enforcing to the point of stripping a 13 yr old girl in a public place? Mere school policy? Since when does anyone who's never had to take any sort of oath to serve or protect have the power to FORCE any individual to do anything? How in the world could a court uphold that as "ok"? How could three women assault another female that way? How could school employee believe that they have the right to touch or force any child or teen in their care, mainly/just because they are a minor.

These people are EMPLOYEES, they are not law enforcement, and they had absolutely no right to assume that she did not have rights against search and seizure as a minor on school property. The fact that it is being upheld only shows how our justice system is failing the American public and refusing to uphold the the Constitution which they were sworn to.

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nothings
2007-10-02 08:33 am UTC (link)

Since when does anyone who's never had to take any sort of oath to serve or protect have the power to FORCE any individual to do anything? How in the world could a court uphold that as "ok"?

It took me a while to find anything about this case (since this and the blog posts have no good search terms, and the youthrights.org link isn't working for me), but the answer to your question boils down to this:

New Jersey v. T.L.O. (SCotUS, 1985).

which basically says that yes, school officials have this power. (I note that this ruling occurred just as I graduated from high school, so yeah, it's new to me.)

So this 9th circuit ruling here is pretty much just about the strip search part of things. A summary of the case I read elsewhere describes this as:

April Redding was then collected, and denied Marissa's allegations. Redding complied with a search of her backpack, which yielded nothing. She also agreed to go to the nurse's office to be searched. She was required to pull her underwear out at the crotch and shake it. Redding was never touched. Her mother was not called prior to the search.

Additionally, the Court concluded that based on the privacy of the nurse's room, the fact that Redding was not touched, and that she was permitted to get dressed immediately, the search was reasonable.

So, it's still pretty bogus on the ibuprofen front, but from the summary I've read they were doing this based on two different kinds of unidentified pills they'd found (one of which was claimed to have come from Redding). Are they supposed to wait for lab results to come back before searching her?

So for me it mostly boils down to whether the described search (visual, in the nurse's office) was reasonable, and the ibuprofen and school-officials-searching issues aren't that significant.

You can certainly argue that this is a case of slowly accruing more and more, until the end result is ludicrous. But it doesn't feel like that's the case here.

I'm not condoning it, exactly, I'm just saying that the minimal summary here on LJ and in the NYRA blog are extremely biased in their presentation of the events. If it's so horrible, you shouldn't need to slant it so heavily to make it sound bad.

Also, of course, the decision was 2 to 1. So this outcome basically stems from one person in the right place who thought it was acceptable.

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taradinoc
2007-10-02 09:11 am UTC (link)

from the summary I've read they were doing this based on two different kinds of unidentified pills they'd found [...] Are they supposed to wait for lab results to come back before searching her?

Here's the opinion (PDF).

From the dissent:

The school officials did not suspect that the
pills were something other than ibuprofen. The nurse recognized
the pill immediately as an ibuprofen tablet.

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	nothings 2007-10-02 09:15 am UTC (link)
	Aha, ok. (Reply to this)(Parent)

geminiwench
2007-10-02 09:19 am UTC (link)

That sounds like someone relenting to things she doesn't know she has the right to say, "no, this is wrong" to, and once she's said, "I guess thats ok"... they can do whatever they want.

How come this 13 yr old can consent to her panties being searched by her Vice Principal, but not a 18 yr old boy? How does this not sound inherently wrong to you?

It certainly did to Judge Thomas, who pointed out that a nude search of a thirteen-year-old child where she was ordered to expose her breasts and her pubic area, constituted "an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude" and "[a] violation of any known principle of human dignity."

Not to mention that her parents were not contacted and the suspicion was based on a combonation of hearsay and teachers thinking that some other students in the school had been doing drugs and since there was one unidentified blue pill her friend was holding and said, "o no, its not mine, its hers!" which turned out to be double-strength ibuprofen... well,... this isn't a decision that any justice system should be proud of upholding.

What if you gave your Rx strength naproxin sodium to a collegue and your boss' boss, your boss, and some random HR lady said, "This is a drug-free environment. If a prescription is filled in your name, you cannot let anyone else use that Rx, that is illegal and we believe you may be involved in those activities. Let's go to a conference room and check those panties, ok?" you would be AGHAST and rightfully so, because its ILLEGAL for a boss to ask that of you even if it was illegal for you pass your simple and benign non-inebriating Rx around.. But its not illegal for a 13 yr old to be asked that by her vice principal. You seriously think that is ok? Would it be ok if it was you in the private conference room, not being touched by your boss and two others while they closely watch you shake out the crotch of your panties because someone said, "O, I got this from Sean. Its a Pepcid, I swear!"

I know I had my rights trampled as a teen by my high school administrators only to realize too late I said "ok, fine.. whatever" at just the wrong time. My school administrators commited fraud, lied to court and defamed me. I can't be the only person who has been pushed into a very uncomfortable situation by their schools/teachers/admin who are just trying to cover their ass and forget where lines SHOULD lie vs DO lie.

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nothings
2007-10-02 09:28 am UTC (link)

What if you gave your Rx strength naproxin sodium to a collegue and your boss' boss, your boss, and some random HR lady said, "This is a drug-free environment. If a prescription is filled in your name, you cannot let anyone else use that Rx, that is illegal and we believe you may be involved in those activities. Let's go to a conference room and check those panties, ok?" you would be AGHAST and rightfully so, because its ILLEGAL for a boss to ask that of you even if it was illegal for you pass your simple and benign non-inebriating Rx around.. But its not illegal for a 13 yr old to be asked that by her vice principal.

See, it's not just illegal for your boss to ask to check your panties, it's illegal for your boss to EVEN ATTEMPT TO SEARCH YOU IN ANY FASHION AT ALL.

But the same is not true for schools, because the Supreme Court said so in 1985, basically. If you don't like that, don't complain about this decision, complain about the lack of legislation or something for the last 22 years to override it.

Now, maybe the panties thing is bad, I'm not clear on the situation, but the fact you're making such an inflammatory (and bad) analogy is the sort of thing that bugs me about most of the coverage on the subject.

My school administrators commited fraud, lied to court and defamed me.

That's entirely different, surely.

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geminiwench
2007-10-02 09:56 am UTC (link)

Actually, here are MANY cases similar which are being overturned as illegal strip searches on school grounds in very recent legal past

http://www.aele.org/law/Digests/civil202.html

Because the Supreme Court Said So doesn't ring well with me. The Supreme Court has been a dumbass before, and has had to re-evaulate old rulings later on, and HOPEFULLY they will get the chance to do on with this case. Some laws are 100% illegal/asinine/irrelevant, which is why we should speak out about them when we notice rather than saying, "Oh, well, thats what the court said. Doesn't matter if its 'right', I guess."

Also, it comes down to "reasonable cause" for such a search, which seems to point to "no" to me. 13 yr old tells a teacher he/she happens to be hiding a swiss army knife in her panties/between his balls and ass... maybe a search is in order. Some girl says, "I got this ibuprofen from that girl"... maybe not so much.

My situation was different, but I was still pressured to say/do things I did not feel comfortable with by people who should have never asked me to do so in the first place.... as this case sounds to me.

The only difference between the two stories in my "bad" analogy is that one is illegal and one is not... when the situations are amazingly similar and clearly both should be illegal,... but one isn't because minors don't count as people, apparently. At least, says Justice Powell who "....felt that students in primary and secondary educational settings should not be afforded the same level of protection for search and seizures and adults and juveniles in non-school settings."

You get the same rights in your workplace as you do on the street, but minors have different rights depending on if they are at their school, which they are FORCED to attend legally. (At least you can quit your job) or any other 1'x1' bit of land anywhere else in the United States.

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nothings
2007-10-02 10:11 am UTC (link)

Some girl says, "I got this ibuprofen from that girl"... maybe not so much.

As I understand it, there were two or three accusations against her (one about distributing alcohol), and they'd found the pills and contraband in a notebook possessed by the "some girl" accuser, and the accused admitted to giving the notebook to the "some girl" for the explicit purpose of concealing things from her parents. That's sufficiently far from "some girl says "I got this ibuprofen from that girl"" that I can't say on the face of it (without hearing a lot more and looking into the law) whether that's reasonable.

You get the same rights in your workplace as you do on the street, but minors have different rights depending on if they are at their school, which they are FORCED to attend legally.

I agree this is the heart of the outrage here, and that it sounds outrageous on its face. But I'd have to look at the case law to see why things have come out this way since it's obviously evolved over time.

As to your link, here are all the school cases:

There was not reasonable suspicion sufficient to justify a strip search of a female high school student on the basis of statements by a fellow student that she had heard the student tell others that she had hid drugs in her underpants. There was no indication that the informant student provided reliable information in the past, and no attempt to corroborate the tip.

My prior description of the "reasonable cause" suggests why the above case is different.

Female high school students subject to a strip search conducted by the school's dean, who was looking for $60 allegedly stolen from a fellow student, stated a viable federal civil rights claim when the dean did not have information sufficient to provide individualized reasonable suspicion needed to conduct such searches.

The threshhold for drugs is different than the threshhold for money. (This was pointed out in some commentary on this case I read somewhere.)

Strip searches of more than twenty male and female students by schoolteachers, seeking to recover stolen money, carried out, in part, at the direction of a police officer, were unconstitutional,

Money again, and the breadth of the searching sounds like they didn't have a sufficiently specific target.

Eight 8th-graders strip searched by officer during search for missing money were entitled to $5,500 each in damages; search was "invasive and degrading" and not based on individualized suspicion that any of them had taken the money.

Same as above.

Strip search of entire fifth grade elementary school class in an attempt to find $26 collected for a class trip which was allegedly missing was "disproportionate" to the harm of missing the money and therefore an unreasonable search

Same as above.

And that's all of the ones that appeared to be about schools, so I dispute "here are MANY cases similar which are being overturned as illegal strip searches on school grounds", or rather I dispute that they are similar enough to be relevant.

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geminiwench
2007-10-02 10:38 am UTC (link)

Redding was suspected because A: she had been acting "strangely" at a dance, and latter they found cigarettes and alcohol in the girls bathroom... however, it does not say whether the girls were ACTUALLY connected with the evidence found, although they do say that it was not "brought up" whatsoever... so, apparently not.

Then, a kid flips out on his mom, and says it was some pills he got from Redding... which, being as apparently Redding is only giving out Naproxen and Ibuprofen... well,.. either the kid was faking the experience or got it from another student. Yes, someone was hiding a pocket knife, a lighter, some naproxen, some ibuprofen and a permanent marker. Why not kick her out due to Zero Tolerance? Why strip and humilate her then send her back to class if those were being connected with her. The knife alone should have meant expulsion... not "make her shake her panties".

Schools are the last places we fix social problems, things like desegregation, racism, homophobia, separation of Church and State, physical abuse by administrators, enforcing policies against student abusers/bullies... public schools are the last places to benefit from modern law, modern thinking, oftentimes. That doesnt mean we should accept it and say, "well, thats the way it is."

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nothings
2007-10-02 10:15 am UTC (link)

Sorry, I keep not replying to this part of your issue:

I was still pressured to say/do things I did not feel comfortable with by people who should have never asked me to do so in the first place.... as this case sounds to me.

I'm doubtful that this is actually a significant part of the case (though I haven't read the actual opinions). That is, I think everyone involved is aware that the situation is a coercive one; nobody said "well, she admits she said "ok" so throw the case out". It's mention as part of a long narrative of the events that happened leading up to the strip search. It may be _bad_ that she was pressured to accept it, and arguably if she hadn't accepted it we wouldn't have had this lawsuit (because she'd have been kicked out or whatever), but maybe we'd have had a different one (over her being kicked out), so I'm not sure it matters.

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	geminiwench 2007-10-02 10:30 am UTC (link)
	You're right,.. lawsuits are lawsuits. I mean, its only the civil rights and liberties of a 13 yr old. Sure, we have to protect them from things like sex eduation, make sure they read the note about Intelligent Creation in their biology books, and don't have sex with anyone 18 months or older than them... but conducting strip searches? Lets do it! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	nothings 2007-10-02 10:32 am UTC (link)
	I have no idea how what you're saying has anything to do with what I said. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

geminiwench
2007-10-02 10:43 am UTC (link)

Paraphrased to let you hear your words as I heard your words.

You said, yes, it might have been a coercive environment.
Just because its "bad" doesn't mean its 'wrong" that she was pressured to accept the situation.
And hey, she'd probably sue no matter what... so, its not like this is a big deal or anything. We'd hear about this one way or the other.

So,.. my response of "Eh, its all the same to me. The court says its fine, I say its fine. Next case" sentiment seems quite valid to me. heh

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nothings
2007-10-02 11:22 am UTC (link)

Your paraphrase is not accurate: my point was it does not seem to be a significant issue in Redding v. Safford. She did not sue them for coercing her to say yes, and the court didn't throw it out automatically despite her saying yes. So her yes doesn't seem to have anything to do with it.

Therefore it may be bad in general that people are placed in a position where they feel obligated to say "yes", but that's neither here nor there for this case. The 9th court opinion is not saying it is good that people are placed in that position, or is it arguing that the yes has any legal standing.

If the court were saying "she said yes, therefore it was ok", that would be an entirely different debate. Possibly one more relevant to your personal experience, but, again, that's another subject.

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geminiwench
2007-10-02 09:38 pm UTC (link)

I guess its all hypothetical if they had continued the search or what action would have been taken in the case that she said, "no"... more than likley explusion, which is what they should have done in the first place, rather than searching her panties.

Its a terrible thing when saying "yes" or "no" doesn't mean anything, and coercion is just what you can expect to experience even though the answer apparently doesn't matter.

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