Student strip-search case before Supreme Court U.S. Supreme Court

When Savana Redding, now 19, talks of what happened to her in eighth grade, it is clear that the painful memories linger.

She speaks of being embarrassed and fearful, and of staying away from school for two months. And she recalls the "whispers" and "stares" from others in this small eastern Arizona mining town after she was strip searched in the nurse's office because a vice principal suspected she might be hiding an extra-strength ibuprofen in her underwear.

The Supreme Court will hear her case on Tuesday. Its decision, the first to address the issue of strip searches in schools, will set legal limits, if any, on the authority of school officials to search for drugs or weapons on campus.

If limits on searches are imposed, the school district warns, its ability to keep all drugs out of its schools would be reduced. In this case, said district lawyer Matthew Wright, the vice principal was concerned because one student had gotten seriously ill from taking unidentified pills.

"That was the driving force for him. If nothing had been done, and this happened to another kid, parents would have been outraged," Wright said.

In California and six other states, strip searches of students are not permitted.

Only once in the past has the high court ruled on a school-search case, and it sounds quaint now. It arose in 1980 when a New Jersey girl was caught smoking in the bathroom, and the principal searched her purse for cigarettes.

The justices upheld that search because the principal had a specific reason for looking in her purse. But they did not say how far officials could go - and how much of a student's privacy could be sacrificed - to maintain safety at school.

That's the issue in Safford Unified School District vs. Redding.

Savana was an honors student, shy and "nerdy," she says, when the eighth grade began.

She first learned she was in trouble when Kerry Wilson, the vice principal, came into a math class one morning and told her to come with him to the office. He was in search of white pills.

Wilson knew a boy had gotten sick from pills he obtained at school. And that morning, another eighth grader, Marissa Glines, was found with what turned out to be several ibuprofen 400 pills tucked into a school planner. A few days before, Savana had lent Marissa the folder. When asked where she got the pills, Marissa named Savana Redding.

These "could only be obtained with a prescription," Wilson reported.

Commonly used for headaches or to relieve pain from menstrual cramps, ibuprofen is marketed under brand names including Advil and Motrin with recommend doses of 200 to 400 mg.

"District policy J-3050 strictly prohibits the nonmedical use or possession of any drug on campus," he explained later in a sworn statement.

Savana said she knew nothing of the pills in the folder.

"He asked if he could search my backpack. I said, 'Sure,' " she recalled. When nothing was found, Wilson sent Savana to the nurse's office where the nurse and an office assistant were told to "search her clothes" for the missing pills.

Savana said she kept her head down, embarrassed and afraid she would cry. After removing her pink T-shirt and black stretch pants, she was told to pull her underwear to the side and to shake to see if any pills could be dislodged.

It was "the most humiliating experience," she said.

"We did not find any pills during our search of Savana," Wilson reported.

When her mother arrived at the school to pick her up, another student called to her: "What are you going to do about them strip searching Savana?"

Upset and angry, April Redding said she marched to the principal's office, then to the superintendent's office nearby. Both denied at first knowing that a student had been strip searched.

"It was wrong. I didn't think anything like that could happen to my daughter at school," she said, wiping a tear.

Contacted at the school last week, Wilson declined to discuss the case, as did other school officials.

When no one apologized, April Redding sued the school district for damages. Her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union say the strip search went far beyond the bounds of reasonableness, especially when there was no imminent danger.

So far, judges have been almost evenly divided over whether Savana's rights were violated. A federal magistrate in Tucson held the search was reasonable because the vice principal was relying on the tip from Marissa. In a 2-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

Last year, however, the full 9th Circuit took up the case and ruled 6-5 for the Reddings. Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said the vice principal's action defied common sense as well the Constitution. "A reasonable school official, seeking to protect the students in his charge, does not subject a 13-year old girl to a traumatic search to 'protect' her from the danger of Advil," she wrote.

Last autumn, the school district appealed to the Supreme Court, saying it "finds itself on the front lines of the decades-long war against drug abuse among students."