MORE THAN A SILLY STRIP SEARCH

When she was a 13-year-old student at Safford Middle School in
Arizona, Savana Redding was strip-searched by school officials in
search of - this is no joke - ibuprofen. Now she is suing the district
and the officials for violating her Fourth Amendment protection
against unreasonable searches and seizures.

It is not good for Redding that while the U.S. Supreme Court heard
arguments on her case last week, Justice David Souter commented, "My
thought process is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip
search, if we can't find anything short of that, than to have some
other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and
things go awry."

The good news, I guess, is that Souter is not the surgeon general,
because he seems unable to distinguish between Advil and
methamphetamine.

But that's it for the good news. Redding was an honor student with no
disciplinary marks against her when another student was caught in
class with prescription ibuprofen, small knives and a cigarette. That
girl falsely told Assistant Principal Kerry Wilson that she got the
pills from Redding.

Redding denied the charge. Wilson searched her backpack and found
nothing. So he asked a female assistant and school nurse to
strip-search Redding. The two women took Redding down the hall and
instructed her to remove her socks, shoes and jacket, then shirt and
pants, and finally, when she was down to her underwear, they asked her
to pull and twist her underwear - exposing herself - to see if any
pills fell out. Redding later described the episode as "the most
humiliating experience" of her life.

The experience should have been among the most humiliating for Wilson,
the assistant and the nurse: They didn't find any pills.

Matthew Wright, the attorney for the school district, told the
Associated Press that media coverage is negative due to "a superficial
understanding of the facts." He did issue a statement that school
officials are "in the untenable position of either facing the threat
of lawsuits for their attempts to enforce a drug-free policy or for
their laxity in failing to interdict potentially harmful drugs."

So instead, they got a lawsuit for strip-searching an innocent kid
because they were fool enough to think she might hide a legal drug in
her bra. Yes, those would be the adults in this story.

I should note that the other student was found with 400 mg
prescription ibuprofen pills, not a 200 mg over-the-counter Advil. But
that is a distinction without a difference. I have to agree with U.S.
Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw, who, in a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals ruling in Redding's favor, wrote, "We reject Safford's effort
to lump together these run-of-the-mill anti-inflammatory pills with
the evocative term 'prescription drugs' in a knowing effort to shield
an imprudent strip search of a young girl behind a larger war on drugs."

Wardlaw also was appalled that Safford conducted a less intrusive
search of the girl who falsely accused Redding, while never asking a
boy suspected of the same infraction to strip. If the school was
compelled to strip-search Redding to prevent a lawsuit or harmful
episode, why not the others?

Slate Magazine's Dahlia Lithwick noted that when Justice John Paul
Stevens asked what discipline the district meted out to the girl who
falsely fingered Redding, Wright answered, "Oh, there was no
discipline that I know of."

Interesting. Common sense could have prevented this irritating case.
School districts ought to have better things to do - like educating -
than banning student use of over-the-counter drugs. If parents don't
want their children taking medication for headaches or cramps, let
parents say no. It's not the schools' job.

Common sense also should tell school officials not to strip-search
students for any reason without a parent's permission. Asked what she
thinks the school should have done, Redding's answer was simple: "Call
my mom first."

The Supreme Court does not have a strong track record when it comes to
recognizing student or parental rights. In 1995, the Big Bench ruled
that an Oregon school could require school athletes to submit to
random drug testing, in part because of the "increased risk of
sports-related injury." In 2002, the court supported an Oklahoma
school district's mandatory drug policy for students participating in
any extracurricular activities, sporting or not - even if parents
objected to the test.

Perhaps, however, this episode is too extreme even for this court. Or,
as Souter also noted, "at some point, it gets silly."