The Supreme Court offered a real
eye-opening example of cluelessness yesterday in wrestling with
the case of Savana Redding, the 13-year-old strip-searched by high school administrators in search of prescription ibuprofen they suspected her of hiding in her underwear.
The case began when the adults in charge of her Arizona middle school seemed so out of touch with—and even afraid of—their own students that they deployed a tactic straight out of a made-for-TV prison movie against an honors student over a legal drug that, as far as we know, might do something for menstrual cramps or acne (it's the equivalent of two Advil) but isn't known to make anybody high. Not only do all kids look alike to them, but so do all drugs.
Justice Roberts, despite being the youngest and most with-it guy on the high court, agreed: "How is a school administrator supposed to know?" he asked rhetorically. "He sees a white pill and doesn't know if it is something terribly harmful, even deadly, or if it's prescription-strength ibuprofen."
It got worse from there. Justice Breyer tried to show how tuned-in he is by opining that kids hide things in their underwear all the time. "And in my experience people did sometimes stick things in my underwear," he added, to general amusement in the courtroom.
(Savana Redding, AP Photo)
Har har. But the court looked even more over-the-hill when Breyer went on to question whether a strip search was a big deal, anyway, since kids these days don't seem all that embarrassed about getting naked. They change into their gym clothes all the time, he noted, suggesting that the principal should have had some school administrator watch while Savana changed so her underwear could be checked.
Setting aside the innumerable memoirs that include scenes of agonizing humiliation involving junior high school locker rooms, Breyer seems to be unable to distinguish between getting naked in front of other kids and doing the same thing
under the creepy eyes of fully clothed adults.
Which is the same problem that sexting is causing
law enforcement authorities all over the country: they can't figure out how to distinguish between brazen (or desperate, depending on your point of view) teenage girls
sending nude photos of themselves to boyfriends (or, sadly, would-be boyfriends, as a form of marketing) and adults distributing kiddie-porn. So they end up with the specter of
16-year-old girls on the
sexual predators list.
Clearly, we don't know what to do with kids who seem to need protection, and are legally underage, but manage to embarrass their elders with their sexual exploits. Isn't the problem keeping them in their clothes, the justices implied, not coaxing them out of them?
Oh, and by the way, when the school district's lawyer told the court that the middle school principal had the right to order a search of any place at all that a student might "reasonably" hide contraband, Justice Scalia asked if that applied to a "body-cavity search."
The lawyer allowed as how he didn't see that happening in school, but claimed it would be quite legal.
