Saturday, January 17, 2009

Supreme Court to hear school strip search case

As reported here, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear Safford (AZ) Unified School District's appeal of the Ninth Circuit's reversal of the dismissal of Savana Redding's suit against it for strip searching her to look for ibuprofen when she was a 13-year-old honor student with no history of discipline issues at her middle school.

I hope SCOTUS isn't taking the case in order to overturn the Ninth Circuit. The July 11, 2008, Opinion of nine of the eleven appeals court judges who heard the case details the Constitutional basis for holding the school personnel responsible for their unreasonable violation of the privacy and person of the 13-year-old student.

The Ninth Circuit held that
[T]he public school officials who strip searched Savana acted contrary to all reason and common sense as they trampled over her legitimate and substantial interests in privacy and security of her person.

It would be a shame if parents had to worry more about schools abusing their children than the "evils" that Safford U.S.D.'s officials say they want to protect our children from.

2 comments:

MLR said...

The New York Times reported about this case on March 23, 2009, in advance of its oral argument to be held on April 21, 2009. Here's the URL for the NYT article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/us/24savana.html?_r=1&ref=education

MLR said...

Here's the report from the Boston Globe of the LA Times article about the oral argument on 4/21/09 --http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/04/22/top_court_sounds_skeptical_on_limiting_student_strip_searches/