Skip to main content

Yeah - High court against blantantly illegal strip searches of 13 year olds!

By Unknown
The Supreme Court surprised me today and decided, 8-1, that it was a violation of the Fourth Amendment to strip search a 13-year-old girl in search of advil. Advil. The lone evidence that Savanah Redding even had the "drug" came from a fellow student who had been caught with the drugs.

There was no evidence, as the court noted, that she was hiding them in her underwear.

As Justice Souter said for the majority...

What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana [Redding]
was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or
their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her
underwear. We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to
finding the search reasonable."

I really had hoped for this outcome. Though based on the oral arguments, I wasn't entirely sure it was likely. I'm mixed on the immunity for the administrators. Its a nice compromise, but really, if there isn't liability for a horrible search like this one, what's the real outcome: "Ooops, sorry we strip searched your innocent 13-year-old daughter. We'll try not to make that mistake again."

I have to call out Justice Thomas on this one. I generally like Thomas, despite his many detractors who are often distracted by other things to really see what is going on, but his dissent is unreal. Absolutely unreal.

The school needs to keep order? By conducting strip searches of areas where no drugs are suspected, even when the drug is Advil? And if he is going to support this, why not then just approve of cavity searches? I mean, the drugs could have been stashed there, as well, right? Since the administrators admitted they didn't "see anything," maybe Savanah had them tucked away in her ass crack (or worse) for safe keeping?

This is really just another offshoot of the crazy war on drugs and zero tolerance policies. I mean, a strip search and Supreme Court case over Advil?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NIGHTMARE: Three Kids; One Invite

By Unknown
Its a triplet parents worst nightmare, really. I only have triplets, so most of what I;m about to say about singletons is conjecture and assumption, but here goes: I imagine that when you have three kids of different ages its easy when only one of them is invited to a birthday party. Any younger child is probably interested in where an older sibling is going, but is easily refocused. Older children probably just don't care what a younger child is doing, but to the extent they are invested, I'd think its easy to explain to them. After all, they are probably in different schools, or at least different grades. They have different teachers, different classmates, and while they may share some friends, those are largely different as well. Not so with triplets When you have three kids all the same age they attend the same  school; often in the same class (as ours do). So when only one of them receives an invite, as our daughter did, its hard not  to feel slighted. After all, ...
6 comments
Read more

Thoughts On Breastfeeding

By Unknown
I was going to post in this space about breastfeeding eventually.  It started when I joined Twitter recently as @triplethedad (follow me!) and started following a bunch of Mom and Dad types.  Although I previously experienced the ferver of the breastfeeding crowd, I was still taken aback by the militartism of some of them and the "us against them" attitude. I knew I would have to address it at some point, but honestly, as a Dad to formula fed triplets, I don't have a lot of experience or knowledge.  And further, while I'm not 100% comfortable around breastfeeding women, I have no problem with them/it and realize what they are doing is totally and completely natural.  So, between the lack of deep understanding and acceptance, I wasn't sure where to start.  What I did know was that I wanted to address the unnecassary ferver around the topic and the seeming war between formula and breast. Luckily, Jamie Lynn of Iamnotthebabysitter.com beat me to it in a post o...
2 comments
Read more

Nature v. Nurture; Nature Wins Everytime

By Unknown
Many parents have probably looked beamingly at their children and thought “what a wonderful job I did.” At times, at least. But what about the bad seed? Are parents responsible for that one, as well? These questions come down to whether our children arise from “nature” or “nurture.” Is it the genes we give them at birth, or the jeans we wear when we play with them that molds them, so to speak. Most parents don’t get a good shot at any type of scientific look at this. Even if you have three kids, they are likely spaced out over various periods in life featuring different levels of income, stress and parental availability. If nothing else, life is different with one than three, meaning that first one probably received a different level of attention – at least at first. But I’m somewhat unique here: I have all 3 at once. Same circumstances; same income; same attention. Its that experience that leads me to the belief that its definitely nature and not nurture. DS1 is a laugh machin...
1 comment
Read more