In addition, they claimed that when they brought these complaints to the school’s administration, their First Amendment right to free speech was violated when several administrators reprimanded them.

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The suit was initially dismissed but, surprisingly, on Wednesday a federal appeals court reinstated the lawsuit, claiming that forcing the students to perform transvaginal ultrasounds on each other could constitute an “unreasonable search” and that their First Amendment right to free speech may have been violated.

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The findings are interesting for several reasons. “Unreasonable search” claims are usually associated with police scraping for evidence to be used in court, not with student in a class exercise.

And courts tend to give colleges expansive, albeit not unlimited, authority to control what happens on their campuses when it comes to free speech.

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The case began with three students — Mellisa Milward, Elyse Ugalde and Ashley Rose — in Valencia’s sonography program, which is highly competitive, admitting 12 students each year.

There, students taught all manner of ultrasound techniques, preparing them for careers as ultrasound technicians.

One of the procedures taught in the class was transvaginal ultrasounds, which observe the entire pelvic region and are often used to investigate issues with fertility or pregnancy. According to WebMD, to perform this procedure, a technician must insert the transducer into the vagina.

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According to the court:

The probe is also rather large and can be painful for some women. It requires heavy lubrication, and sometimes the technician will stimulate the patient to help insert the probe.

When teaching this procedure, the school asked the students to perform the procedure on each other. When possible, that is — one of the 12 students that year was a male.

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Milward, Ugalde and Rose didn’t feel comfortable participating.

But when they stated as much, they were reprimanded.

“Although the transvaginal ultrasounds were purportedly voluntary,” the opinion stated, “in practice, the employees required students to perform them on each other.”

For example, when Milward and Ugalde expressed their issues with the ultrasounds, then program chair Barbara Ball “told them they could find another school if they did not wish to be probed,” the court stated.

Additionally, the Orlando Sentinel reported, “A footnote in the lawsuit states that Ball told one of the plaintiffs, during a probe, that she was ‘sexy’ and should have been an ‘escort girl.'”

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It continued:

When Milward complained to [the clinical and laboratory coordinator] Shaheen about the ultrasounds, Shaheen responded that she would suffer academically and professionally if she refused to participate. The employees also threatened to lower the students’ grades, and [the laboratory technician] Bugnacki threatened to blacklist them at the local hospitals.

Eventually Milward and Ugalde submitted to the probe, but Rose never did. In response, she received two failing grades and was yelled at until she had a panic attack, according to the court. It read:

As punishment, the employees did not allow Rose to watch the other students perform the ultrasounds. Amodt also threatened to bar Rose from a hospital, gave Rose two failing grades, and yelled at Rose for an hour until she had a panic attack.

Eventually, all three women quit the program as a result of this controversy, according to the Gainesville Sun.

The trio felt that these alleged retaliations against their complaints infringed their First Amendment right to free speech. Milward and Ugalde, who eventually underwent the procedure, felt that the ultrasounds violated their Fourth Amendment protection “to be secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

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In May 2015, the three filed a lawsuit in district court against Ball, Shaheen, Bugnacki, Amodt, and the Board of Trustees of Valencia College, stating as much and seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, and fees and costs. The board was later dropped from an amended version of the suit.

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Quickly after the lawsuit was filed, the school stopped the practice.

“Weighed down by the distraction of the current controversy, the value of voluntary peer-to-peer participation in transvaginal ultrasound scanning no longer rises above the benefit of using simulation technology, especially in light of recent advances in that technology,” college president Sandy Shugart told the Orlando Sentinel in a statement later in May 2015.

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The suit was dismissed by U.S. District Judge Gregory Presnell, who ruled that the students right to protection from unreasonable search wasn’t violated because the employees who directed the women to participate “did not have the intent to elicit a benefit for the government in its investigatory or administrative capacity,” the Gainesville Sun reported.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit vacated Presnell’s dismissal of the case and remanded the suit for further proceedings.

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In response to Presnell, Circuit Judge William Pryor argued that the “the word ‘search’ in the Fourth Amendment does not contain a purpose requirement.”

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Pryor continued:

Inserting a probe into a woman’s vagina is plainly a search when performed by the government. Where the government physically intrudes on a subject enumerated within the Fourth Amendment, such as a person, a search “has undoubtedly occurred.”

When Presnell originally dismissed the case, he classified the trio’s speech as “school-sponsored” expression, which as the Center for Public Education noted, would mean the speech carries the “implied message of school backing.” An individual’s “school-sponsored” speech does not carry the same protections as regular speech.

Pryor wrote that this line of reasoning was also incorrect, pointing out that the trio was not speaking, in any way, on behalf of the school.

“In this appeal, the students’ objections did not bear the imprimatur of the school, were not supervised by faculty, and were not designed to impart particular knowledge or skills,” the ruling said. “Instead of assessing the students’ speech as school-sponsored expression … the district court should have evaluated it as pure student expression.”