U.S. Supreme Court to hear school strip-search case

From the Austin (TX) Statesman via the Los Angeles Times

Supreme Court to hear school strip-search case

By David G. Savage
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Sunday, April 19, 2009

SAFFORD, Ariz. — 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 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.

Only once in the past has the high court ruled on a school search case. In 1980 a New Jersey girl was caught smoking in the bathroom, and her 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 v. Redding.

Judges have been split over whether Redding's rights were violated. A federal magistrate in Tucson, Ariz., upheld the search because the vice principal was relying on a student's tip. In a 2-1 decision, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

Last year, however, the full 9th Circuit Court took up the case and ruled 6-5 for Redding. Last fall, the school district appealed to the high court, saying it "finds itself on the front lines of the decades-long war against drug abuse among students."

Also on the docket

This week, the Supreme Court will consider the reverse-discrimination claim of Matthew Marcarelli and a group of white firefighters from the New Haven, Conn., department. They all passed a promotion exam, but the city threw out the test because no blacks would have been promoted, saying the exam had a "disparate impact" on minorities likely to violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Mary Frances Berry, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania and head of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights during the Clinton administration, said the firefighters' case has broad implications.

"This is about whether we are going to see a sea change in how the judiciary looks at the need for these (protections), and how the popular culture and electoral politics influence their perceptions," Berry said.

Besides the firefighters' lawsuit, the Supreme Court will soon hear a case seeking to overturn a Voting Rights Act requirement that all or parts of 16 states, including Texas, with a history of discrimination must get approval from the Justice Department before changing election procedures.