School Searches Safford v. Redding – PLSC 337-02: The American Legal System

Assistant Principal Wilson had heard from another student that 13-year-old Savana Redding had been giving out prescription-strength pain relief pills. Safford School District had a strict policy against the use, sale, or distribution of prescription drugs without administrative permission. Assistant Principlal Wilson showed Redding a planner that contained several knives, a lighter, and cigarettes. Redding admitted that it was her planner, but that she had lent it to a friend. After searching through Redding’s belongings, they did not find any evidence of any medicine. They decided to conduct a strip search where Redding had to pull her bra and underpants out to show that nothing was hidden in there. Nothing was found in this search either.

Redding’s mother filed suit against the Safford School District on the grounds that the strip search violated her daughter’s 4th Amendment rights in regard to unreasonable searches and seizures.The Supreme Court ruled that the search did violate the 4th Amendment of the Constitution because there was no reason to suspect that the “drugs presented a danger or were conceal in her underwear.”

Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the court. He cited the case of New Jersey v. TLO which dealt with searches at schools. A search at school must not be “excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” This is the standard that I have the hardest time with in this case. Redding is a 13-year-old girl, and she was probably terribly embarrassed having to take off her clothes in front of the school nurse.

This video is an interview with Savanna Redding that describes her personal experience with the search.

Additionally, there was not enough reasonable evidence in my opinion for this search. The assistant principal heard from another student, Marissa Glines, that the pills were from Redding. The only other evidence that the assistant principal had to go on was that the day planner belonged to Redding as well. There was no indication in the planner that Redding had any medication. The faculty did not take enough time or care to determine any alternative motives of Glines for blaming Redding. Based on the totality of the circumstances and the specific facts of the case, I agree with the opinion of the Court that this search was a violation of the 4th Amendment.

Keshara Moore says:

March 20, 2017 at 12:42 pm

In my personal opinion the fact that such a search on behalf of the school even took place it a bit baffling simple do to the fact that aside from a few assertions made from another student, the principle had no actual evidence to go off of in believing that Redding had prescription drugs and was handing them out to friends.
As far as from a legal view point goes, I agree with Megan that the “excessively intrusive” standard is a bit confusing in that I don’t believe the Court really spells out what excessively intrusive means and what such infractions warrant such searches and what infractions do not. Though the technicalities of the standard seem to be quite fluid in terms of definition, I do understand why school searches unlike searches by law enforcement require a lower level of suspicion being “reasonable suspicious” instead of probable cause as the latter setting easily falls into the category of sensitive spaces. With that being said, I do agree with the Court’s ruling that Redding’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated following the precedent set in New Jersey v. T.L.O because though the school may have had reasonable suspicion and thus this warranted a search of Redding’s belongings, to escalate this search from her belongings to forcing her to strip naked (an act that would make anyone feel embarrassed and a loss of dignity) in the hopes of finding a items that that the Court defined as “non-dangerous contraband” very much seems to be an abuse of power on behalf of the school.
As for the school and its officials involved in the search being left off due to them being shielded by qualified immunity, I believe this just goes to show how precedent can be both beneficial yet lacking as it may have set previous standards for school searches that allowed the conclusion that Redding’s rights had been violated, the precedent also failed to present to the school that such search held any definition of illegality and thus they could not be held responsible for actions that were not expclitly illegal at the time. This conclusion seems to me to be a bit unfair to Redding as the school officials seemed to be let off simply because they didn’t know better which does not seem like a good enough excuse for their actions in my personal opinion.