Supreme Court to weigh strip-searches at schools

Last year, however, the full 9th Circuit Court took up the case and ruled 6 to 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.

"A school is not a prison. The students are not inmates," she added, noting that juvenile prisoners are given more rights than were given Savana.

Two of the dissenters agreed the search was unreasonable, but they said the officials should be shielded from suits because the law has been unclear.

The three other dissenters, including Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, said the search was reasonable based on what Wilson knew at the time.

Last fall, 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." The justices voted in January to hear the case, a good sign for the school district.

In recent years, national school officials say they have heard of only a few instances of strip-searches at schools.

After the search, Savana refused to return to the middle school. She did not want to be in the presence of the nurse or the office assistant who she said humiliated her.

She went to an alternative high school in Safford but dropped out before graduating. She is taking psychology classes at nearby Eastern Arizona College.

She and her mother plan to travel to Washington to hear her case argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. For Savana, it will be her first trip on an airplane.

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david.savage@latimes.com