Pubdate: Sat, 17 Jan 2009
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Los Angeles Times
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/bc7El3Yo
Website: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: David G. Savage, Reporting from Washington
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?225 (Students - United States)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/strip+searches

SUPREME COURT TO HEAR SCHOOL STRIP-SEARCH CASE

The Justices Will Also Determine Whether a Child With a Disability 
Must Try Public Education Before Being Reimbursed With Taxpayer Funds 
for Private School Tuition.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear two schools cases, one to 
clarify the law on searching students for drugs and the other to 
decide whether taxpayers must cover private school tuition for a 
child with a disability before the student has tried a public school.

The drug case began when school officials in southern Arizona decided 
to crack down on the use and abuse of prescription medications, 
including ibuprofen.

The Constitution protects against "unreasonable searches" by the 
government, and the court in 1985 extended this protection to 
students. But school officials also were told by the court that they 
could search students, their backpacks or their lockers whenever 
there was reason to suspect they had drugs or had violated other school rules.

Now, the court will decide whether a strip search is reasonable.

Last year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco 
upheld a student's right to sue her assistant principal for ordering 
her to be taken to a nurse's office and examined in her underwear. 
Officials in her middle school were alarmed about the abuse of 
prescription drugs, including prescription-strength ibuprofen. One 
student had fallen violently ill from ingesting these pills.

Savana Redding, 13, was identified by another girl -- wrongly, it 
turned out -- as having brought the pills to school. The search in 
the nurse's office turned up nothing. The girl described the strip 
search as humiliating, and she and her parents sued the Safford 
Unified School District and the assistant principal for violating her 
constitutional rights.

In its 6-5 decision, the 9th Circuit judges said the assistant 
principal should be held liable for "a grossly intrusive search of a 
middle school girl to locate pills with the potency of two 
over-the-counter Advil capsules." The judges said that this full-body 
search was clearly unreasonable in light of the circumstances.

Before the case could go further, the school district appealed to the 
Supreme Court. Its lawyers said the ruling, if allowed to stand, 
would "create enormous confusion for school officials in trying to 
determine when and how searches may now properly be conducted." They 
also said that because judges do not understand the "shifting trends 
in drug abuse," they should defer to the judgment of school officials.

A lawyer for Savana said students should not be deprived of their 
rights. "It offends both common sense and the Constitution to 
undertake such an excessive, traumatizing search based on nothing 
more than an uncorroborated accusation of ibuprofen possession," said 
Adam Wolf of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The court voted Friday to hear the case of Safford vs. Redding in April.

An Oregon case the justices agreed to take up will decide a dispute 
over special education.

Federal law says schools must provide a "free appropriate public 
education" to students with a disability. This can include paying 
tuition at a private school, but it is unclear whether parents first 
must try a public program before they can claim reimbursement for the 
cost of a private school.

Last year, the 9th Circuit said the Forest Grove School District must 
pay the $5,200 monthly cost of a private program for a child with 
attention deficit disorder. The court will hear the appeal in April. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake