U.S. Supreme Court Holds School Strip Search of 13-year-old Girl Violated the Fourth Amendment

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Safford Unified School District v. Redding (June 25, 2009) that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment by strip searching a 13-year-old girl in an effort to find prescription-strength ibuprofen.  The ruling affirms the en banc decision of the Ninth Circuit.

The Redding decision does not address the issue pending before an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit:  May prison and jail officials use a suspicionless blanket strip search to keep drugs and weapons out of detention facilities?  That case — Bull v. City and County of San Francisco — was heard en banc in March 2009. The Supreme Court has not addressed the issue of jail strip searches since its 1979 decision in Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S. 520, which held that a blanket strip search of prisoners after returning from contact visits was constitutional.  There is a split among the circuit courts since the 11th Circuit held that such blanket searches were reasonable when a prisoner is going to be placed in the general jail population.

Safford v. Redding – because of its school setting and facts — continues a disconnect between Bell v. Wolflish and the approach of most of the circuit courts to strip searches.  Redding involved a student who school officials had reason to believe was bringing contraband (a relatively harmless prescription-grade ibuprofen) to school. 

Redding follows the well-established 4^th Amendment construct of individualized suspicion. While recognizing that school searches require a lower level of suspicion than law enforcement searches, the majority held that a strip search in the Redding case required individualized suspicion that contraband was hidden in the student’s underwear.

“In sum, 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. We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”  Safford Unified School Dist. v. Redding (June 25, 2009)

Justice Souter wrote the 8-1 majority opinion on the constitutional issue.  Justice Thomas dissented, stating that the search was reasonable and not in violation of the 4^th Amendment.  On the issue of qualified immunity, the Court ruled 7-2 that school officials were entitled to immunity because the law was not clearly established.

The majority opinion does not purport to set rules for law-enforcement settings (including jails) or any setting outside of schools.  It builds on the earlier school search case, New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325 (1985).

Justice Souter wrote:  “The indignity of the search does not, of course, outlaw it, but it does implicate the rule of reasonableness as stated in T. L. O., that ‘the search as actually conducted [be] reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place.’ 469 U. S., at 341 (internal quotation marks omitted). The scope will be permissible, that is, when it is ‘not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.’ Id., at 342.” 

Thus, the Redding majority concluded that the age and gender of the plaintiff were relevant factors in finding the strip search of an adolescent girl unlawful under the circumstances.

Read the full decision in Safford Unified School District v Redding here.