Supreme Court rules school's strip search of teen Savana Redding unconstitutional
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WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a strip search of a 13-year-old schoolgirl by administrators looking for banned medication was unconstitutional.
The high court held in the 8 to 1 opinion that a male assistant school principal in Arizona and a female nurse violated student Savanna Redding's rights when they ordered her to partially undress in a fruitless search for a tiny amount of Ibuprofen pain relief pills.
Only Justice Clarence Thomas dissented in the "regrettable decision" by the majority, reveling in the details of the teen drama.
The conservative justice even questioned whether Redding was really strip-searched - arguing that the term is reserved for those required "to fully disrobe in view of officials."
"What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana 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," soon-to-retire moderate Justice David Souter wrote in the majority opinion.
The justices described how the Safford Middle School official, Kerry Wilson, told Redding to "pull her bra out and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area."
The search - prompted by schoolmates who ratted Redding out as a pill pusher - came up empty.
But the 'tween girl, who had described standing exposed before the school administrators as "humiliating," felt vindicated.
"I'm pretty excited about it, because that's what I wanted," Redding told the Associated Press. "I wanted to keep it from happening to anybody else."
Liberal-leaning Justice John Paul Stevens said Redding's forced nudity - even if partial - was "outrageous conduct."
"I have long believed that it does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magnitude," Stevens wrote
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