In 2003, middle school officials in Safford, Arizona began investigating students who carried prescription drugs to school without a prescription from a doctor. Acting on a tip from another student, the school’s assistant principle searched 13-year-old Savana Redding’s backpack for ibuprofen. When the assistant principle did not find any medication in Redding’s backpack, two female aides conducted a strip-search, requiring the 13-year-old to expose her breasts and pelvic area. The aides did not find any medication on Redding’s person and Redding’s mother filed suit against the school district for being “unnecessarily intrusive” when searching Redding for pills the girl did not posses.
The suit has rekindled an old debate over the appropriate limitations on the power of school officials to investigate students for allegedly acting against school policy. After a series of school shootings and various acts of student violence in schools across America caught our nation’s attention in the late 1990s, a horrified public demanded that schools provide more security to protect our children. Metal detectors, drug dogs, and an increase in campus police originally mollified concerned parents. But as security continuously increases and school officials adopt policies that give them more power to search children, many Americans wonder where the line should be drawn.
Safford United School District No. 1, et al., v. Redding will ask the Supreme Court to clearly define the scope of the Fourth Amendment in regards to students’ rights. In New Jersey v. T.L.O, the Supreme Court set the precedent that any searches of students must be “reasonable” and must be “reasonably related to the objectives of the search, and not excessively intrusive in light of the student’s age and sex and the nature of the infraction.” Redding’s mother appealed to this standard when she filed suit against the school district. However, judges in the District Court found that a strip-search was reasonable, despite the fact that the only “evidence” against Redding was the word of another student who had been caught with prescription drugs.
Savana Redding was accused of bringing ibuprofen to school, not a bomb. The measures taken by school officials were excessive to say the least. I assume the Supreme Court left its language a bit vague in hopes that it would have the elasticity to give the school district’s varying levels of power depending upon the circumstances. But the Court might assume too much when it assumes competence from other public officials.
The Supreme Court can easily avoid problems like these by using less subjective terms when writing a landmark opinion. The Court, and the judicial branch in general, have the unique ability not only to decide whether or not the enforcement of measures by the executive branch are constitutional, but also to legislate rules that members of the executive branch must follow in order to protect the rights of those being investigated. Miranda v. Arizona is a prime example of the court legislating such a rule from the bench. In Miranda, the Supreme Court mandated that all law enforcement officials must inform a suspect of his or her right to an attorney and his or her right to remain silent before interrogating the suspect.
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will legislate a similar protocol that school officials must follow in order to protect students’ rights. First, the student should have the right to contact his or her parent or legal guardian at any point in the investigation or search. The investigation should be put on hold until the parent or legal guardian either approves the search measures or until a parent or legal guardian is present. This protects both the student from having his or her rights violated and the school from costly lawsuits. Second, the student and the student’s parents should have the ability to object to a non-partisan school district official should there be a disagreement on the reasonability of the proposed search measures. Third, school administrators should make the text of this protocol available to students and parents upon the child’s enrollment in school.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the case on April 21, 2009, and the justices must rule on the case before the summer recess, which usually begins at the end of June. As the Supreme Court has already begun to rule on a large number of the cases in its docket, it is likely that the Court will render a decision within the week. Based upon the voting records of the justices, it is also likely that the verdict will be 5-4 one way or the other, with Justice Kennedy providing the swing vote. In the past, Kennedy has upheld Constitutional rights and due process over security concerns, including two cases in which the court rejected planned military tribunals for suspected terrorists and declared a home search unconstitutional because the police did not get the consent of both residents. Hopefully, Kennedy will continue protecting civil liberties and rule that the strip-search of middle-school children is unconstitutional and unreasonable.
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