If you decide to strip search a 13-year old girl, you could find more than you bargained for.  This case got started when 13-year old Savana Redding was taken into the assistant principal’s office.  He showed her a day planner containing knives and other contraband and Savana admitted only to the planner, but said she lent it to her friend, Marissa.  He then produced prescription-strength pain pills and said he had a report Savana was handing them out.  She denied it and agreed to a search of her backpack.  She was then taken to the school nurse’s office and told to remove her outer clothing.  The nurse pulled down her bra and her underpants, but no pills were found.  The Court found for Savana holding that while searching her backpack was okay, strip searching her was not, that it was frightening and humiliating and, while such searches are not outlawed, the context of suspicion must match the degree of intrusion.  The Court did not award damages because prior cases weren’t clear, but from now on if you strip search 13-year old girls, you’d better find something and that’s the stripped down version of a case that wasn’t even a clothes call.

THIS IS NEIL CHAYET LOOKING AT THE LAW™

Safford Unified School District No. 1, et al. v. Redding, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 08-479, June 25, 2009, Souter, J.

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