WASHINGTON — After two decades of giving school officials wide leeway to search students for drugs or weapons, the Supreme Court set a legal limit on Thursday, ruling out of bounds the strip-search of a 13-year-old girl who was suspected of hiding pain relief pills.
In an 8-1 decision, the court called this search degrading, unreasonable and unconstitutional.
Justice David H. Souter, in what could be his final opinion before his retirement, said a strip-search is "categorically distinct" from other efforts to find drugs or weapons on campus because it is embarrassing and humiliating to the children who are targeted.
In the past, the court has said school officials can search purses, backpacks or lockers if they have reason to believe a student has drugs. And twice, justices have upheld mandatory drug testing of high schoolers, including athletes, even when there was no reason to think any of them was using drugs.
But requiring a student to remove her clothes goes too far, Souter said. He suggested such a search would be justified only if a school official had strong reason to believe a student was hiding a dangerous drug or a weapon in his or her underwear.
Savana Redding, now 19, whose lawsuit in Arizona led to Thursday's ruling, said she was pleased and surprised by the outcome. "I'm very excited and very happy knowing it means this is not likely to happen to anyone else at school," she said. Redding will attend Eastern Arizona College this fall, she said.
Her lawyer, Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he was encouraged that the court had made clear that students have privacy rights at school.
"Schoolchildren are not little prisoners subject to search. This says the Constitution applies in school, and children have rights that must be respected," he said.
School lawyers read the decision as nearly prohibiting strip-searches.
"We don't think it is a horrible decision, but it is going to limit the discretion of school officials. They will think long and hard before they authorize a strip-search in the future," said Naomi Gittins, a lawyer for the National School Boards Assn.
In 2003, Redding was an eighth-grader in the small town of Safford, Ariz., near the border with New Mexico. That fall, one boy had gotten violently ill from taking pills at school. When another girl was found with several white pills in a folder, she told Vice Principal Kerry Wilson she got them from Savana. The pills were prescription-strength ibuprofen, equivalent to two Advil tablets.
