STRIPPED OF COMMON SENSE

Some Supreme Court justices tipped their collective shaky hand last
week while hearing arguments regarding the constitutionality of
strip-searching students as part of schools' drug policies.

The justices' comments indicate they will overturn a 9th Circuit
Court of Appeals opinion that found an Arizona school's decision to
strip-search a 13-year-old honor student unconstitutional.

The facts: On Oct. 8, 2003, based on a "tip" from a student who had
been caught with prescription ibuprofen that Savana Redding was the
source of the drugs, school officials pulled the eighth-grader out of
her math class, searched her backpack, and upon finding no
contraband, ordered her to the nurse's station to be strip searched.
Redding was forced to pull out her bra and shake it about, the same
with her underpants, to prove no pills were hidden therein. Which
they were not.

Our broad-brush "war on drugs" leaves no room for critical or
sensible thinking. Strip searching for ibuprofen? Strip searching an
honor student who has never been in trouble based on the word of a
girl who is in trouble? Strip searching at all? That's just as
wrong-headed as school drug policies that test students who go out
for extra-curricular activities.

But the justices weren't concerned with any of that. Writing on
Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick reports that Justice Stephen Breyer was
puzzled at how a strip search could harm a child: "... why is this a
major thing to say strip down to your underclothes, which children do
when they change for gym?"

An exasperated Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lithwick writes, tried to
explain the difference but Breyer was too busy reminiscing.

"In my experience when I was 8 or 10 or 12 years old, you know, we
did take our clothes off once a day, we changed for gym, OK? And in
my experience, too, people did sometimes stick things in my
underwear," Breyer said. Then: "Or not my underwear. Whatever.
Whatever. I was the one who did it? I don't know. I mean, I don't
think it's beyond human experience."

Justice David Souter said he "would rather have the kid embarrassed
by a strip search ... than have some other kids dead because the
stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry."

Justice Antonin Scalia, Lithwick reports, was almost chortling when
he wondered what happens after "you search the student's outer
garments, and you have a reasonable suspicion that the student has
drugs. You've searched everywhere else. By God, the drugs must be in
her underpants!"

Except, of course, when they are not.

Senior moments do not good Supreme Court decisions make.