School strip search takes ‘safety’ too far

Imagine that Savana is your 13-year-old eighth-grader, an honor student sitting in math class when the assistant principal pulls her down to the office.

On the assistant principal’s desk is Savana’s planner, which she had lent to classmate Marissa. But there also are some knives, cigarettes and a lighter.

None of those extras belongs to Savana, but she owns up to giving Marissa the planner to hide cigarettes from her parents.

Then there are the ibuprofen pills found in Marissa’s pocket. As is typical, Savana’s school prohibits bringing prescription or over-the-counter drugs on campus.

Not mine, Savana says. But the assistant principal doesn’t believe it because Marissa said she got them from Savana.

Savana agrees to a search of her backpack, which turns up nothing. Not satisfied, the assistant principal tells his aide and the school nurse to strip Savana to her underwear. When they don’t find anything in her shoes, socks, jacket, T-shirt or pants, they have her pull out her bra to the side then shake out the crotch of her panties.

No Midol or Aleve falls out, but Savana is humiliated, on the verge of tears.

Absolutely outrageous, you say? Incredibly intrusive? Completely unjustified?

As her parent, that’s a no-brainer.

But put yourself in the assistant principal’s place.

At the first school dance, there’s a whiff of liquor around some of the students, including Marissa and Savana.

A liquor bottle and cigarettes turn up in the girls’ bathroom. They aren’t linked to Savana.

But more than a month later, a student named Jordan tells you that he got sick after taking pills he got from an unnamed classmate. Jordan also says that Savana’s mom bought alcohol that students drank at her home before the school dance. (Savana and Mom deny that.)

A week later, Jordan tells you that Marissa gave him prescription-strength ibuprofen and that other kids planned to pop pills at lunchtime. That’s when you take Marissa out of class, and she tells you Savana gave her ibuprofen and Naprosyn.

Well, you’ll be darned if you’re going to have students bringing dangerous substances to school and endangering others. So you go after Savana to get to the bottom of it.

A reasonable reaction?

Maybe. But a strip search?

Until last week, federal courts in California had ruled that officials at Safford Middle School in Arizona were within their authority.

Thank goodness the 9th Circuit came to its senses when the full court reconsidered the case.

The Court of Appeals (which covers California and other western states) said school officials violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures, meaning Savana’s mother can proceed with her civil rights lawsuit.

A student search in a school setting is considered reasonable when it is “not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”

But, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote for the majority, “the public school officials who strip searched Savana acted contrary to all reason and common sense as they trampled over her legitimate and substantial interests in privacy and security of her person.”

But only six of 11 judges agreed. Two judges said that the strip search was unreasonable but that the law wasn’t clear enough for the officials to have known that, so they shouldn’t be held liable.

Three other dissenters said school officials get wide latitude to protect students’ health and safety and neutralize danger.

The problem in this case is that no one explicitly implicated Savana as a drug supplier behind the pill-fest planned for lunch. The most officials had was the word of a classmate who apparently was protecting her own behind. And nothing but the assistant principal’s own suspicions suggested that Savana would be hiding ibuprofen in her undies.

Zero-tolerance policies that ban even over-the-counter medication for pain and headaches seem overzealous. At the same time, it’s naive to think that some teenagers won’t abuse even the most innocuous drugs — and invite their classmates to join in.

A locker search is one thing. A backpack or purse search somewhat more intrusive. But snooping inside a 13-year-old’s underwear, for a common painkiller no less, that’s a technique that belongs in a jail, not in a school nurse’s office unless there’s more evidence of a grave and immediate threat.