An Arizona school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old student by conducting a strip search for ibuprofen, a divided U.S. appeals court has ruled.
Suspecting that a student had violated a policy against prescription or over-the-counter drugs without permission, public school officials in Safford, Arizona, ordered a search of Savana Redding. A school nurse had her remove her clothes, including her bra, and shake her underwear to see if Redding was hiding anything.
The 2003 search, prompted by a tip from another girl, did not find ibuprofen, which is found in common medications like Advil and Motrin to treat pain like cramps and headaches. Higher doses require a prescription…
“Directing a 13-year-old girl to remove her clothes, partially revealing her breasts and pelvic area, for allegedly possessing ibuprofen, an infraction that poses an imminent danger to no one, and which could be handled by keeping her in the principal’s office until a parent arrived or simply sending her home, was excessively intrusive,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the majority.“And all this to find prescription-strength ibuprofen pills,” Wardlaw continued later. “No legal decision cited to us, or that we could find, permitted a strip search to discover substances regularly available over the counter at any convenience store throughout the United States.”
In a dissenting opinion, Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wrote, “We should resist using our independent judgment to determine what infractions are so harmful as to justify significantly intrusive searches.”
In my considered opinion, Judge Michael Daly Hawkins is an idiot.
I can’t believe this had to go all the way to a U.S. appeals court!
Good thing they caught it early, Ibuprofin, Aspirin, and Tylenol are gateway drugs.
Almost every drug addict on the street started with those, some of them very young using drugs marketed specifically to children, what with the pushers doing things like making them chewable and making them taste good.
We got to nip it in the bud! And god forbid we use our independent judgment.
#2
Joven
I think the bigger issue is we don’t want this Girl growing up thinking she has inalienable rights…
“We should resist using our independent judgment to determine what infractions are so harmful as to justify significantly intrusive searches.”
hmm. I wonder what exactly he thinks the job of an Appeals court judge IS, anyway …
What is wrong with us? How have we strayed so far?
If our schools hadn’t been defunded by the conservatives, every school would still have a nurse and a dispensary.
So, kids wouldn’t need to take ibuprofen to school.
@Smartalix
By not taking stands against obvious idiots. I think we are so worn down by our busy lives that we just don’t have the energy to care anymore.
In the last several decades, America has been pushing the idea that America is a tough nation and is not weak. When America displays diplomacy it is with guns and bombs not talk. Talking is a sign of weakness.
The school system has adopted the same attitude. Zero Tolerance. No Ifs and Buts about it. The school system means business. It is tough not weak.
If you look around, you will find the same characteristic in other things like TV.
This over reaction towards weakness is like our over reaction towards sex.
So when will the public school officials and nurse in Safford, Arizona be brought up on child molestation and sexual abuse charges?
Zero tolerance is bullshit.
Dear bac,
I think you have the sociology right.
This kind of mindless legalism is symptomatic of the same trend that brought us “Three Strikes” and mandatory sentencing.
As our country has shifted to the Right, we are becoming less thoughtful and more legalistic.
Ron
I’m the dumb Canadian who doesn’t understand Americans and how they think sometimes so excuse my ignorance.
First of all, why is this in a senior court? That’s absurd unless this is a precedent of some type.
Second, I’m not getting this whole state’s right to know over personal privacy freedom thing. To me it sounds kind of “un-American”. For example, McCain wants to appoint judges who will overturn Griswold vs Conneticut (states could not deny married couples access to birth control – basically right to privacy).
I don’t think this is necessarily a Democrat vs Republican thing (Hawkins was appointed by Clinton) but a shift in some fundamental thinking.
Zero tolerance policies don’t work. Never have, never will. They are devised by people with zero comon sense, zero imagination and towering arrogance.
#12 “Zero tolerance policies don’t work. Never have, never will. ”
They work just fine. The percentage of U.S. citizens incarcerated in some form or fashion has never been higher. All paid for by the rest of the sheeple.
#11. “First of all, why is this in a senior court? That’s absurd unless this is a precedent of some type.”
No doubt it is a precedent. I imagine it has to have happened before, but a lot of parents go along with this zero tolerance crap, having been terrorized by “Your Children At Risk!” stories in local news media.
GregAllen,
It was the liberals who said the school Nurse, a trained and licensed professional, can not actually DO anything or dispense anything except condoms. So the ‘conservatives’ (i.e. responsible parents)decided to stop paying the salary of someone who was just a liberal patsy.
“We should resist using our independent judgment..” And isn’t that what schools are all about?
Schools are for teaching the next generation of unquestioning labour for our corporate overlords.
I was a reader of this blog until today. I hope I have enough resolve to stick to my guns.
My objection is this blog is now redundant. Most things come directly from fark.com.
I still enjoy JCD but I won’t let that ruin my life. This blog is ruining my life. Eideard, whatever that is, is doing a hack job of being a pageview oracle.
I wonder why Fark never gets attribution. Anyone?
News flash, Bryan. Nobody forced you to come here.
Jeebus H Christ. Why is it that people who sign their names and include their middle initial and/or suffix(es) are always asshats?
As a teacher I don’t want to go there.
The question is whose policy was it? They said the school’s but this sounds more like a school system policy in which case the school may not have had descretion.
That is often the nature of really bad choices. Somebody set a good sounding policy and then in practice…You end up having to do things any idiot would know better than to do because you have no options.
Isn’t that just it? The fact that there is always a policy to hide behind; the fact that ‘any idiot’ who knows better still follows that policy instead of opposing it, or simply refusing to comply with it. Risky, maybe… but a lot less risky than collectively deferring responsibility for individual actions to ‘the system’.
For a light-harded illustration, watch ‘A few good men’; for a grim one, read up on your choice of A. Nazism, B. Stalinism, C. Khmer Rouge.
(I know the examples are on a different scale than the problem here, so you don’t need to remind me 🙂 )
Does anyone else think it’s crazy that this is the reaction to a child with Ibuprofen; but if this same girl wanted an Abortion, the same people don’t even want the parents told about it? Which has a better chance of harming the child, Ibuprofen, or an abortion? Why is one sacrosanct and the other isn’t? Roe v. Wade is a stance on medical privacy. So, why doesn’t this child’s privacy matter in the case of an OTC pain killer, but it does in a medical procedure with actual chances of complications?
I’m just asking for consistency.
keep beating up that strawman, Calin.
#21, Calin,
Repeat after me,
I am we Todd it. Sofa King we Todd it.