Supreme Court rules against strip searches
Today the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that it was illegal for middle-school officials in Safford, Arizona to strip-search 13-year-old Savana Redding because another student claimed she'd hidden ibuprofen in her bra. The lone dissenting vote was Clarence Thomas.
Thomas warned that the majority's decision could backfire. "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments," he said. "Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."That's not a typo. Jill quips, "Thomas only restates what high school girls everywhere have always known: Your panties are the safest place to secrete. "
On a more serious note, Amanda ponders what this means for student privacy rights and power dynamics in schools more generally. She writes,
I doubt it will do much to roll back the problem of zero tolerance policies, however, which are the main problem at hand. Linking this back to Jesse's post about discipline patterns and prejudice, it's important to understand that in zero tolerance land, it becomes acceptable to freak out over things like a girl having Midol in her purse or some boy wears baggy pants. When anything can be treated like rock solid evidence of criminality, it becomes super easy to railroad kids that trip up the school officials' prejudices. Not that I don't think the school-to-prison pipeline couldn't exist without zero tolerance, but I'm guessing it greases the wheels significantly. The irony of zero tolerance is that it's going to be selectively enforced. It has to be. When you can blow pretty much any behavior up to make it seem criminal, either everyone is turned into a criminal or you simply focus all your attention on kids that you had your suspicions about because of their race, family's income level, or, as in the days after Columbine, their tendency to wear black clothes and listen to weird music.Earlier this week, Justice Thomas was also the sole dissenter in the Court's decision to uphold Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which makes areas with histories of racial discrimination get federal approval for any changes in the way they run elections. G.D. at PostBourgie explains the justices' ambivalence despite the 8-1 decision, and the need for Congress to update the law.
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Pedantry: looks 7-1. I don't see Roberts joining the majority or any of the concurrences.
Also, I'm surprised this site's writeup didn't make a bigger deal of the majority's finding of qualified immunity and seeming lack of any remedy.
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/08-479.pdf
Page 4:
SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, BREYER, and ALITO, JJ., joined, and in which STEVENS and GINSBURG, JJ., joined as to Parts I–III. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which GINSBURG, J., joined. GINSBURG, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.
8-1
Whoops, no idea how I missed that when I first looked.
The problem with zero tolerance is also that people who employ it lose all sense of nuance and understanding. It becomes all about control and the feeling like everyone's trying to "get one over on you."
I run a rehab home for women and I see it in some workers. They find out someone snuck in heroin and alcohol and they go power crazy to make sure it doens't happen again. Same with these schools, if they here anything about drugs they almost take it as an insult that they didn't catch it and so go completely overhand with the next kid that comes their way. It starts and "us vs. them" mentality that is not beneficial.
If school officials are so up in arms about drugs being in students' underwear, no one is stopping them from calling the police to do a LEGAL strip search.
But then they'll have to give up some of their power over students and maybe rethink their zero tolerance policies. Horrors!
Oh yeah. As a (younger) teacher I've seen so many flagrant abuses of power by the adults, so many times that we the authorities make rules not for their benefit but for our convenience. And when teachers get locked into that kind of struggle, I see really depressing things happen: teachers gloating over student mistakes, getting extremely petty over grading -- you name it.
To me the bathroom pass issue is the worst... at one point I heard a teacher actually say, "If you want to use the bathroom, ask, and we'll decide if you need to go or not." (emphasis added)
I always try to undermine the system when I can, but that leads to some selective enforcement, too...
"If you want to use the bathroom, ask, and we'll decide if you need to go or not."
Reminds me of my Chemistry teacher from high school. Whenever I asked, she'd say "I don't think you really need to go". That was never the case when one of her favorite students asked.
She deserves to have some poor girl menstruate all over one of her classroom chairs. It always amazes me when women, particularly, are so insensitive to students needs--surely they remember being menstruating teenagers.
During high shcool (1999-2003), I carried with me about 20 ibprofen all the time. Most of my friends knew I had some sort of pain reliever always on hand, and would occasionally ask me for some when they were experiencing cramps. I never realized that I could get in serious trouble if an administrator ever caught me. However, I'm pretty sure I gave out the drugs while in class, and my teachers didn't notice or didn't care.
What I really want to say is this:
If you treat young adults like children, they will never have a chance to grow up.
Strip searches and zero tolerance turns the school into a prison already. This idea about how they are doing it to keep "troublemakers" out of prison.
My high school did "random" searches. The security guards would make us all go into the hallway and then wand us, while another security guard searched our bags. This never happened during my AP classes. It happened during choir, or gym, etc. I can imagine that it also happened a lot during the non-AP classes. It was pretty apparent which types of students were being targeted.
I also saw that kind of favoritism when I was a National Merit finalist (thus, most of the faculty knew me by name). I would sneak out of school early if there was a sub in my last class, or when I had a study hall. I could pass the principal on my way out, and she would smile and say "Hi Emily!" She assumed that I must have had a pass. Meanwhile, most other students were chased down and interrogated as to why they weren't in class.
I must say though, I have to wonder who tattled on the girl about the ibuprofen anyways. I mean, what an asshole.
I hate the favouritism in schools - treating the AP/"gifted" kids so much better than the "regular" kids.
I got into the gifted program in 8th grade and kinda stumbled into AP track - but some of my friends and current boyfriend didn't (he's a great example because he WAS in gifted at another school, but the paperwork wasn't transferred when he moved). My school doesn't do searches or anything, though I doubt that drug tests are really random.
Anyway, kids in the tougher classes are treated more like thinking individuals - kids who aren't are treated like blathering idiots, inconveniences to be gotten through the system as quickly as possible. AP/gifted kids are regularly pulled out of classes to get information on college, financial aid, scholarships, and other things the counseling office provides. Not the "regular" kids, who you'd think would be less likely to have this information in the first place.
Through race and class into the mix and it's just a crock of shit no one in administration is willing to recognise.
I think the kids who do well in school earn the trust of the faculty. And since the kids who do well in school are smart, they know how to use that trust to their own advantage. In my high school, we had our own hall passes to limit how many times we left class in a month. We had to write down the date, the span of time when we were out of class, and the reason for leaving class, and the teacher had to sign it. My friends and I just handed one of our dumber teachers a pencil to sign it, and we erased all the stuff we filled in and the teacher's signature. That gave us unlimited "bathroom breaks." We'd spend most of the class period out of the room. And since we sat next to the door, it was easy for us to pop in and out undetected. So teachers think they're keeping the delinquents in check, when the smart kids just break school rules without getting caught.
Our school had a log book for bathroom breaks. If you didn't have your school designated planner with the log, you didn't leave the room. Sometimes you couldn't leave the room at all, especially if you were in certain classes. I wound up in the English class the school pitted for druggies and trouble-makers. Most of the staff knew I was only in it due to scheduling conficts, but after one of the girls who was notorious for problems started kicking my chair, I wasn't allowed to leave the room(for some reason her kicking my chair makes us friends?).
I'm going to go off-topic and ask an ignorant question: Are all American high schools like that?
I'm not sure if this is rhetorical question or not. However, the answer is no. Schools vary by politics within their districts, funding and combination of the two.
American schools
are all like those in "Heathers"
and "Ferris Bueller"
On favoritism, a lot of kids thought I was experiencing it when I really wasn't. My dad taught at the same high school I went to. Other students believed the faculty was giving me special treatment when they really weren't. If anything, they were tougher on me. There was nothing I could do at school without my dad finding out. I remember one time, I got mad at some students for distracting me by being loud. There wasn't anything huge but the teacher e-mailed my dad. I highly doubt if any other kid did that she wouldn't have contacted their parents.
Something that is getting less attention in this ruling but is still important - the court ruled 7-2 (with Stevens and Ginsberg dissenting) that the vice principal who ordered the strip search could not be held accountable for his actions because prior legal rulings were unclear. He's been granted legal immunity, as have the administrative assistant and the nurse, so no one is officially being blamed for the strip search.
The case is being remanded, but unless the Stafford School District is determined to be guilty, ultimately no one will be held accountable for what happened to Savana Redding. Of course I'm happy that her Fourth Amendment rights were recognized, but it's a shame that no one will be penalized for what she was forced to endure
That's exactly my thoughts- no one is being held accountable for the violation of her rights, but they'll uphold that they we're violated? What's to stop the vice principal from ordering another one, if they know they won't be held accountable? Ostensibly the trip to SCOTUS? pshaw...
When the law is unclear--and it was a complete hodgepodge in this sphere--its unfair to punish the principal for 'breaking' the law, 'cuz in this case no one knew where the law was. Moreover the school has reversed its policy here, and 3/4 of AZ school districts have prohibited the practice. Whether the administrators pay or not, I'd say Redding's won.
*Ginsburg - yikes
It's outrageous that the girl was even prohibited from carrying ibuprofen in the first place. Many teenage girls have menstrual cramps that are seriously under-treated, and ibuprofen is not a drug of abuse. And even if it was, is it really more important for students to not be high than for students not to be in pain?
One might also ask: "Is it more important for students not to be high, or for students to have a safe environment in which they will not be randomly subjected to humiliating violations on the part of authority figures?"
That too! What that vice-principal did to the student was essentially sexual assault, and should have been treated as something resembling that.
It's outrageous that the girl was even prohibited from carrying ibuprofen in the first place. Many teenage (and younger) girls have menstrual cramps that are seriously under-treated, and ibuprofen is not a drug of abuse. And even if it was, is it really more important for students to not be high than for students not to be in pain?
I was once searched in middle school, not strip searched though. A student claimed I had a pocket knife (completely untrue!) What got to me is the principal said she didn't know who the kid was. So she takes the word of a student who no one in the office knew over mine?! But really most of my anger is towards that lying kid.
The over-hysterical narc society we have created is out of control. Especially because it is SO aimed at drugs but not anything else.
In middle school, I was dragged into the office for having tylenol because I was young and too humiliated to go to the nurse for my cramps. I was suspended. I was supposed to go through rehab, per the "zero tolerance policy", but the principal went to bat for me.
The next year AT THE SAME SCHOOL, I was repeatedly molested/harassed in front of a class of twenty-some students. No one reported a thing until I got up the courage to contact the very sympathetic principal.
My molester got two days suspension. The same punishment, I'd like to note, as I got for bringing over the counter pain medication to school. Clearly, sexual assault=tylenol.
I know what you mean. Teachers are so often insensitive to the fact that a young teen or preteen girl isn't going to want to tell the school staff that she has her period! For one thing, if she's young, she might be afraid of the news getting out. That happened to me in sixth grade--I went to the office for a nosebleed, was overheard telling the secretary/nurse that I was worried I was losing too much blood because I also had my period, and got asked if I was "moody" by a male classmate the next day. (I slapped him in the face. No, I didn't get punished for it :). )
I know what you mean. Teachers are so often insensitive to the fact that a young teen or preteen girl isn't going to want to tell the school staff that she has her period! For one thing, if she's young, she might be afraid of the news getting out. That happened to me in sixth grade--I went to the office for a nosebleed, was overheard telling the secretary/nurse that I was worried I was losing too much blood because I also had my period, and got asked if I was "moody" by a male classmate the next day. (I slapped him in the face. No, I didn't get punished for it :). )
This is a problem with both restrictive washroom policies and with policies keeping teens who are old enough to use medication responsibly from having it with them at school.
I am a pagan, have been since a young age (having a hippie for a mother can do that!), but sadly i live in southern baptist central. My middle school saw no issue with dragging me to the principal's office to force me to take off my oh-so-offensive pentacle, but when i was beaten black and blue by a bunch of football players they did nothing, except put me in in school suspension for having the nerve to defend myself. When my mother went up to the school with all the fury of the mamma bear she is, she was told that my punishment was due to their zero tolerance policy on violence.
Zero tolerance is a joke, plain and simple.
She should have taken that all the way up to the director of the board of education if necessary, and brought in a lawyer if it didn't get resolved. That's completely outrageous.
The real problem is giving the school officials immunity because the law wasn't "clear"
I don't know the fourth amendment doesn't sound like brain surgery to me. Even without law a general level of decency would tell me not to do this.
Without being held responsible there isn't much incentive not to do it again.
Just a whole lot of incentive not to bring it back to court.
Also, the major problem with zero tolerance is that it's designed to protect school officials from responsibility, not children from harm.