SUPREME COURT SAYS CHILD'S RIGHTS VIOLATED BY STRIP SEARCH

WASHINGTON -- A strip search of a 13-year-old girl by officials at
her middle school violated the Constitution, the Supreme Court ruled
Thursday in an 8-to-1 decision.

The student, Savana Redding, had been suspected of bringing
prescription-strength ibuprofen to the school, in Safford, Ariz.

Justice David H. Souter, writing for the majority, said a search of
Ms. Redding's backpack and outer garments did not offend the Fourth
Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches. But the pills in question,
each no stronger than two Advils, did not justify an "embarrassing,
frightening and humiliating search," Justice Souter wrote.

School officials ordered Ms. Redding, whom another girl had accused
of giving her drugs, to strip to her bra and underpants and to pull
them away from her body, exposing her breasts and pelvic area. No
drugs were found.

The case attracted national attention and gave rise to an intense
debate over how much leeway school officials should have in enforcing
zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence. Some parents were
outraged by the intrusiveness of the search, while others worried
about tying the hands of school officials charged with keeping their
children safe.

The case also revealed a gender fault line at the court. In an
unusual interview about a pending case, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
told USA Today in the spring that judging from their comments at the
argument, her colleagues, all men, had failed to appreciate what Ms.
Redding had endured.

"They have never been a 13-year-old girl," Justice Ginsburg said.
"It's a very sensitive age for a girl. I don't think that my
colleagues, some of them, quite understood."

In the end, Justice Ginsburg's view of the constitutionality of the
search prevailed.

But the decision did not offer particularly clear guidance to school
personnel, who were told only to take account of the extent of danger
of the contraband in question and whether there is good reason to
think it is hidden in an intimate place. So the upshot of the
decision in a practical sense may well be to eliminate strip searches
in schools.

"A number of communities have decided that strip searches in schools
are never reasonable and have banned them no matter what the facts
may be," Justice Souter said, citing a regulation of the New York
City Department of Education banning such searches in all circumstances.

The court stopped short, however, of allowing Ms. Redding's lawsuit
to go forward against the assistant principal who ordered the search
and the two female school officials who conducted it. The state of
the law at the time of the search, in 2003, was too murky to allow
the officials to be sued, Justice Souter said.

A separate claim against the school district based on its practices
and policies was not part of the district's appeal to the Supreme
Court and will proceed.

Justices Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens would have allowed the claims
against individual school officials to go forward. "This is, in
essence, a case in which clearly established law meets clearly
outrageous conduct," Justice Stevens wrote.

Only Justice Clarence Thomas would have ruled the search
constitutional. "Preservation of order, discipline and safety in
public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution," he wrote.

Justice Thomas also said Thursday's decision provided the nation's
students a court-sanctioned hiding place.

"Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her
undergarments," he wrote. "Nor will she be the last after today's
decision, which announced the safest places to secrete contraband in school."

Ms. Redding, now 19, said in a telephone interview that she was
"pretty excited" by the decision. "It makes me feel good," she said,
"that they recognized that it was against my rights and that it most
likely won't happen to anyone else."

A lawyer for the school district said that the decision "offers
little clarification" concerning when such searches are allowed and
that it could have dangerous consequences.

The decision unduly limits "the ability of school officials to
protect students from the harmful effects of drugs and weapons on
school campuses," the lawyer, Matthew W. Wright, said in a statement.

"We can only hope that this decision does not compound the problem
further," Mr. Wright said, "by emboldening more students to smuggle
such contraband into the nation's schools."

The majority made clear that school searches were subject to less
exacting constitutional standards than those conducted by the police.
Where the police must generally have probable cause to conduct
searches, school officials need have only "a moderate chance of
finding evidence of wrongdoing," Justice Souter wrote.

Nor did the majority take issue with the zero-tolerance rule at
Safford Middle School.

"There is no need here either to explain the imperative of keeping
drugs out of schools, or to explain the reasons for the school's rule
banning all drugs, no matter how benign," Justice Souter wrote.
"Teachers are not pharmacologists trained to identify pills and
powders, and an effective drug ban has to be enforceable fast."

But a search of the sort Ms. Redding underwent must be supported by
more than another student's accusation, Justice Souter said.

"The content of the suspicion," he wrote, "failed to match the degree
of the intrusion," particularly given "the nature and limited threat
of the specific drugs" at issue.

At the argument of the case, Safford Unified School District v.
Redding, No. 08-479, in April, Justice Stephen G. Breyer suggested
that the search of Ms. Redding was in some ways comparable to her
changing into gym clothes.

Thursday's decision took a different approach.

"Changing for gym is getting ready for play," Justice Souter wrote.
"Exposing for a search is responding to an accusation reserved for
suspected wrongdoers and fairly understood as so degrading" that many
schools never allow the practice.