Two Advils

Where the War on Drugs has taken us:

Savana Redding still remembers the clothes she had on – black stretch pants with butterfly patches and a pink T-shirt – the day school officials here forced her to strip six years ago. She was 13 and in eighth grade. An assistant principal, enforcing the school's antidrug policies, suspended her for having brought prescription strength ibuprofen pills to school. One of the pills is as strong as two Advils.

The search by two female school employees was methodical and humiliating.... Ms. Redding, an honors student, had no pills. But she had a furious mother and a lawyer, and now her case has reached the Supreme Court.

Apparently the reason the school came to suspect that Redding was carrying the dangerous drug ibuprofen was because a female friend falsely blamed Redding for giving her the drug. (As Redding put it, the friend "started being embarrassed by me because I was nerdy" so the friend decided to get Redding in trouble.) So what's a school to do? Strip search. Though as the Court of Appeals pointed out, there was no reason for the school to think that Redding had the ibuprofen "insider her undergarments, attached to her nude body, or anywhere else that a strip search would reveal."

The current Supreme Court has pretty much read the Fourth Amendment out of the Constitution. (It much prefers the Sixth and Second.) The Court also seems to lose its mind – and any pretense of constitutional principle – whenever it considers cases that involve school kids and drugs. (See e.g. Morse v. Frederick where the Court upheld a school decision to punish students who made a banner proclaiming "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" while they were at a public event off school grounds. No free speech for you, you DFHs.)

Judge Kim Wardlaw of the Circuit Court wrote about the Redding case, "It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights." Given the current Supreme Court, I'm afraid Judge Wardlaw may be wrong. I suspect the Supremes will rule for the school district.

I'm all for giving school officials some deference. But strip searching a 13-year-old to protect her from ibuprofen is Advil Madness.