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Blog -
Kids > School
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Written by Nathan Greenberg
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Thursday, 25 June 2009 08:25 |
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The Supreme Court has said that kids may not be stripped searched at school, even for illicit or banned drugs. The ruling also concluded that school officials could not be sued for the act. But it did not address whether or not school districts would be liable in such instances. I like the idea that schools can't go to such lengths because if the item being searched for is so dangerous that a strip search is justified, the child should probably be arrested. At the very least, I'm sure there are other, more legal, measures to deal with instances such as this. At the same time, school officials still have freedoms to search kids and do their best to keep the school a safe environment. I'd hate to think how much farther down a school could go if officials had their hands tied to such an extent. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/25/scotus.strip.search/index.html
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Bottom line, children in schools should expect to be safe at all times and removal of a potentially danger student from school is reasonable.
If they uphold the "reasonable grounds" theory, I would expect the Court to hold that it was unreasonable to go so far as to subject a teenage girl to being stripped for the possibility of finding an over the counter drug, whether or not the school held a no-tolerance policy.
The Court previously held in 1969 that minor students do not shed their constitutionl rights at the schoolhouse gates and I personally believe that to be true. In this particular case, I doubt the school could demonstrate the girl was in imminent danger or that the school could not contact the parents to determine if she held Ibuprofen at the parents' direction and knowledge.
Our Constitution is predicated on a theory of granting rights. No Article or Ammendment contains any substance or text to remove rights from a class of citizens. In fact, to do so would represent a bill of attainder and that is specifically barred by the Consitution.