NO-BRAINER

The U.S. Supreme Court is taking up the question of whether officials
of an Arizona middle school went too far in strip-searching a
13-year-old girl suspected -- wrongly, it turns out -- of having
given another student ... ibuprofen.

So what, exactly, is the question?

If ever there has been a reality check in the overlapping realms of
constitutional interpretation, common sense and common decency, it
would have to be the case of Savana Redding, formerly a student at
Safford Middle School in Safford, Ariz.

In October 2003 Redding, then 13, was called into the principal's
office. Another student, in whose possession school officials had
found four ibuprofen and an anti-inflammatory (aspirin-type) tablet,
claimed those pills belonged to Redding, an honor student with no
record of disciplinary problems.

A female school nurse and a female administrator took Redding into a
back room, where they ordered her to take off her pants and shirt.
When they didn't find the pills, they ordered her to pull out her
panties and bra and pull them to the side, exposing her genitals and
breasts. No contraband of any kind was found.

Yet the school maintains officials there acted properly, and at least
a couple of Supreme Court justices sound inclined to agree; some of
the comments advanced in defense of the school's conduct boggle the mind.

An attorney for the school district argued that "as long as (school
officials) had reason to suspect, (they were) entitled to search anywhere."

What?

Justice Antonin Scalia reasoned that "the drugs must be in her
underpants" if other hiding places revealed nothing -- as though that
were justification. Justice David Souter offered this jaw-dropping
rejoinder to anyone outraged by the school's conduct: "You're saying
it's better to have the risk of violent sickness or death than to
have the risk of embarrassment."

So the rationale is ... what? That if the ostensible end is the
eradication of drugs, then any means should be considered acceptable?
Even when the suspicion is specious and the "drugs" in question are
the equivalent of aspirin?

As seems to be the trend in cases of this sort, it is the court's
so-called conservative wing that seems generally more sympathetic to
authorities. Yet surely if conservatism can rightly boast a bedrock
moral and constitutional principle, it is that of limiting
governmental intrusion into our lives.

If the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable search and
seizure cannot protect children from being stripped and humiliated on
no better grounds than this, then the definition of "unreasonable"
has been shrunk beyond the limit of coherent meaning.

Everything about this case stinks, beginning with the despicable
conduct of school officials and possibly ending with a precedent that
gives the go-ahead to outrages like this -- including, should you be
inclined to believe such things couldn't happen here, something like
the appalling mass strip-search at Russell County High in 2004.

Incidentally, the court on Tuesday ruled that there are limits to
police searches of automobiles after the drivers have been arrested.
It remains to be seen whether the legal protection afforded your car
extends to your child's body.

- -- Dusty Nix, for the editorial board