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Strip search of schoolgirl, 13, excessive, appeals court says

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The strip search of a 13-year-old Safford school girl to see if she had drugs was unjustified and excessive, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday.

In a split decision, the full court overruled its own three-judge panel, which concluded school officials had reasonable grounds to believe the girl was violating either state laws or at least school policies.

Judge Kim Wardlaw, writing the ruling, said school officials "acted contrary to all reason and common sense as they trampled over her legitimate and substantial interests in privacy and security of her person."

The judge specifically said the "informant" tip from another student was unreliable, especially as the girl had never been in trouble before. And Wardlaw said school officials overreacted given that they were searching for nothing more than a prescription-strength version of ibuprofen, a painkiller that in smaller doses is sold over the counter.

But Judge Barry Silverman, writing for the dissent, said he believes the facts of this case provided school officials with "sufficient information" to reasonably suspect she had a pill, one which Silverman said had a high enough dosage to be potentially dangerous to children.

Mark Tregaskes, superintendent of the Safford Unified School District, said he had not seen the ruling. But Tregaskes said the school has made several alterations to its policies since the 2003 incident that would make it "less likely" a student would be strip-searched in similar circumstances.

Savana Redding, then an eighth- grade honor roll student, said, "I took my case to court because I wanted to make sure that school officials wouldn't be able to violate anyone else's rights like this again.

"This was one of the most traumatic experiences of my life, and I am relieved that a court has finally recognized that the Constitution protects students from being strip-searched in schools on the basis of unreliable rumors," she said, in a press release distributed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The search was initiated after another girl, caught with some pills, said she got them from Redding. That occurred at the same time another student told the vice principal some kids were planning to take drugs.

When questioned by school officials, Redding denied bringing pills to school and denied distributing pills to classmates, but consented to a search of her possessions.

When that turned up nothing, she was told to undress and pull her bra to the side and shake it, exposing her breasts, and to pull her underwear away from her crotch, exposing her pubic area. The search produced nothing.

Her mother sued, alleging her daughter's constitutional rights were violated. But a trial judge threw out the case, as did a three-judge panel of the appellate court.

Wardlaw said the test of whether a search of a student in school is permissible is whether the actions are reasonably related to the objectives of the search, the age and sex of the student, and the nature of the infraction.