Safford Unified School District v. Redding

Safford Unified School District v. Redding, 557 U.S.

Case citation

Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...

(2009) (docket no. 08-479), was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

. It held that a strip search of a middle schooler violated the Fourth Amendment where the school lacked reasons to suspect either that the drugs (Ibuprofen) presented a danger or that they were concealed in her underwear. The court also held, however, that because this was not clearly established law prior to the court's decision, the officials involved were shielded from liability by qualified immunity

Qualified immunity

Qualified immunity is a doctrine in U.S. federal law that arises in cases brought against state officials under 42 U.S.C Section 1983 and against federal officials under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, 403 U.S. 388 . Qualified immunity shields government officials from liability for the...

Background

Officials at Safford Middle School in Safford, Arizona

Safford, Arizona

- History :Safford was founded by Joshua Eaton Bailey, Hiram Kennedy and Edward Tuttle, who came from Gila Bend, in southwestern Arizona. They left Gila Bend in the winter of 1873-74; their work on canals and dams having been destroyed by high water the previous summer...

received a report that 13-year-old Savana Redding had given a classmate four prescription-strength 400mg ibuprofen

Ibuprofen

Ibuprofen is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug used for relief of symptoms of arthritis, fever, as an analgesic , especially where there is an inflammatory component, and dysmenorrhea....

and a 200mg over-the-counter naproxen

Naproxen

Naproxen sodium is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for the reduction of pain, fever, inflammation and stiffness caused by conditions such as:...

. Based on this suspicion, they first searched her belongings; then, believing that "students ... hid contraband in or under their clothing," had her strip to her underwear, "pull her bra out and to the side and shake it," and "pull out the elastic on her underpants" to see what might fall out. The officials did not find any contraband on Redding's person, and they did not contact Redding's parents at any point during the investigation.

Safford School District, like many school districts, has a policy strictly prohibiting the use, possession, or sale of any drug on school grounds, including prescription drugs without advanced administrative permission. A week before Savana was searched, a reported to Wilson that students were bringing drugs onto campus, and, furthermore, the student reported becoming sick after taking pills obtained from a classmate. On the day of Savana’s search, the same student turned a white pill over to Wilson. The pill was later identified as a form of prescription ibuprofen. The student claimed that Marissa Glines had given him the pills. He also reported that he attended a party at Savana’s house at which alcohol was served to his peers. In the presence of administrative assistant Romero, Mr. Wilson requested Marissa to turn out her pockets and open her wallet. Marissa produced a blue pill, several white ones, and a razor blade. Marissa identified Savana Redding as the person who had supplied her with the drugs. Wilson did not follow-up with questions to determine when Savana may have given Marissa the pills, where Savana might be hiding drugs, or how Savana had obtained them. At Wilson’s direction, Marissa was then subjected to a search of her bra and underpants by Ms. Romero and the school nurse. The search revealed no additional pills. Several faculty members alleged that Savana and Marissa were among a group of disorderly students at a school dance earlier in the school year. Marissa’s statement that the pills came from Savana, information from a student that pills were being brought to school, and information from faculty regarding the relationship between Marissa and Savana was determined to be sufficiently plausible grounds to justify the suspicion that Savana was involved in pill distribution.²²

Redding's mother sued the school district and several school officials, arguing that this second, strip search violated Savana's Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause...

right to be secure against "unreasonable searches and seizures.” The Reddings were represented by Adam Wolf of the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project and Tucson-area attorneys Bruce G. Macdonald of the law firm McNamara, Goldsmith & Macdonald, P.C. and Andrew Petersen of the law firm of Humphrey and Petersen, P.C. The defendants denied that such a violation occurred; the individual school officials further argued that, as school officials, they had qualified immunity

Qualified immunity

from such a lawsuit.

The district court found that no Fourth Amendment violation occurred, and a panel of the Ninth Circuit

United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is a U.S. federal court with appellate jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts:* District of Alaska* District of Arizona...

agreed. But in an en banc rehearing, the full Ninth Circuit reversed the panel: it found that Savana's Fourth Amendment rights were violated, and further rejected the individual defendants' claims of qualified immunity

Qualified immunity

.
The defendants (now petitioners) appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted certiorari

Certiorari

Certiorari is a type of writ seeking judicial review, recognized in U.S., Roman, English, Philippine, and other law. Certiorari is the present passive infinitive of the Latin certiorare...

and approved her appeal.

Opinion of the court

Justice Souter, writing for an 8-1 majority vote, held that the strip search violated Savana's Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

rights, but that the individual school officials were entitled to qualified immunity, because the search's unconstitutionality was not clearly established at the time of the violation.

1. Summary of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence related to school searches

First, the court laid out the established Fourth Amendment

Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution

jurisprudence: school searches, to be valid, merely require "reasonable suspicion", not "probable cause"; in terms of the knowledge required to meet that threshold, this calls for only a "moderate chance" of finding the expected evidence, not at "fair probability" or "substantial chance."

Law enforcement searches require "Probable cause": When searches are conducted by law enforcement officers, they must have "probable cause": i.e., the facts and circumstances within his knowledge, and of which he had reasonably trustworthy information, must be "sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of reasonable caution in the belief that an offense has been or is being committed, and that evidence bearing on that offense will be found in the place to be searched.
School searches merely require "reasonable suspicion:" Per New Jersey v. T. L. O.
New Jersey v. T. L. O.
New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325 is a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States addressing the constitutionality of a search of a public high school student for contraband after she was caught smoking. A subsequent search of her purse revealed drug paraphernalia, marijuana, and...

, there is a lower level of suspicion necessary in the school setting: searches of students by school administrators require only "reasonable suspicion
Reasonable suspicion
Reasonable suspicion is a legal standard of proof in United States law that is less than probable cause, the legal standard for arrests and warrants, but more than an "inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or 'hunch' ";...

," such that "the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”
... with a laxer (but more ambiguous) definition of reliable knowledge: This lower threshold comes with a correspondingly laxer definition of "reliable knowledge," but it has been hard to define. Cases have looked to "the degree to which known facts imply prohibited conduct," the specificity of the information received, and the reliability of its source. "At the end of the day, however, we have realized that these factors cannot rigidly control,[] and we have come back to saying that the standards are 'fluid concepts that take their substantive content from the particular contexts' in which they are being assessed." The best distinction might be that prior to conducting an evidence search, a law enforcement officer must have knowledge that raises a “fair probability,” or a “substantial chance,” of discovering evidence of criminal activity, while school officials need only a "moderate chance" of finding evidence of wrongdoing.

2. Elaboration of facts

The court then laid out facts that would determine the level of suspicion/knowledge that the school officials possessed that a school rule was being violated (explaining in a footnote why "the legitimacy of the rule usually goes without saying as it does here"). This evidence was "sufficiently plausible to warrant suspicion that Savana was involved in pill distribution," a suspicion that in turn "was enough to justify a search of Savana’s backpack and outer clothing" (as neither party disputed).

3. These facts demonstrate a violation of Redding's Fourth Amendment rights

The court then applied these facts to the remainder of the search, concluding this search violated Savana's Fourth Amendment rights because it did not meet these requirements.

Adolescent strip search through the lens of T. L. O.: He explained why the search would cause particular "indignity" to an early adolescent, and that this would be relevant to the "rule of reasonableness" as defined in T. L. O. -- namely, that the search as actually conducted be "reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the interference in the first place," i.e. "not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction."
This strip search violated the standard set in T. L. O.: The court determined that, given these particular facts, "the content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion," noting that petitioners failed to provide arguments sufficient to justify "the categorically extreme intrusiveness of a search down to the body of an adolescent" for "nondangerous school contraband". "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."
Concluding this section, Souter wrote: "[T]he T. L. O. concern to limit a school search to reasonable scope requires the support of reasonable suspicion of danger or of resort to underwear for hiding evidence of wrongdoing before a search can reasonably make the quantum leap from outer clothes and backpacks to exposure of intimate parts. The meaning of such a search, and the degradation its subject may reasonably feel, place a search that intrusive in a category of its own demanding its own specific suspicions."

4. These school officials were entitled to qualified immunity

Finally, the court determined that the individual school officials were entitled to qualified immunity, because the search's unconstitutionality was not clearly established at the time of the violation.

Qualified immunity requires "notice" of illegality: The legal question is whether the official had notice of the illegality of his actions. The Supreme Court had recently held that a school official searching a student is entitled to qualified immunity "where clearly established law does not show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment.”. The law can be "established clearly" even if “the very action in question has [not] previously been held unlawful.” .
T. L. O. standard has not provided adequate notice: However, "we realize that the lower courts have reached divergent conclusions regarding how the T. L. O. standard applies to such searches." "[T]he cases viewing school strip searches differently from the way we see them are numerous enough, with well-reasoned majority and dissenting opinions, to counsel doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law."

Justices Stevens and Ginsburg

Justice Stevens, joined by Justice Ginsburg, dissented as to the question of qualified immunity. He would have denied it, as he felt that unconstitutionality of the search was obvious: "This is, in essence, a case in which clearly established law meets clearly outrageous conduct."

He disagreed that the unclarity of the law was shown by the various Courts of Appeals that have adopted "seemingly divergent views" about T. L. O.’s application to strip searches: "the clarity of a well-established right should not depend on whether jurists have misread our precedents."
"And while our cases have previously noted the “divergence of views” among courts in deciding whether to extend qualified immunity, we have relied on that consideration only to spare officials from having “ ‘to predict the future course of constitutional law[.]’ ” . In this case, by contrast, we chart no new constitutional path. We merely decide whether the decision to strip search Savana Redding, on these facts, was prohibited under T. L. O. Our conclusion leaves the boundaries of the law undisturbed."

In a separate opinion, Justice Ginsburg further elaborated on why she thought qualified immunity was inappropriate in this case:

"In contrast to T. L. O., where a teacher discovered a student smoking in the lavatory, and where the search was confined to the student’s purse, the search of Redding involved her body and rested on the bare accusation of another student whose reliability the Assistant Principal had no reason to trust. The Court’s opinion in T. L. O. plainly stated the controlling Fourth Amendment law: A search ordered by a school official, even if “justified at its inception,” crosses the constitutional boundary if it becomes “excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” 469 U. S., at 342 (internal quotation marks omitted)."

"Here, “the nature of the [supposed] infraction,” the slim basis for suspecting Savana Redding, and her “age and sex,” ibid., establish beyond doubt that Assistant Principal Wilson’s order cannot be reconciled with this Court’s opinion in T. L. O. Wilson’s treatment of Redding was abusive and it was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted it."

Concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part

Justice Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas

Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court....

agreed with the courts below that the search did not violate the Fourth Amendment. All parties agreed that the school had "[r]easonable suspicion that Redding was in possession of drugs in violation of these policies," and whereas the majority believed this justified only the first search, Thomas concluded it "justified a search extending to any area where small pills could be concealed." (Thomas, J., dissenting). In his opinion, Thomas warned that the majority's decision could backfire: "Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments. Nor will she be the last after today's decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school."

External links

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Scotus Wiki (briefs, documents, and analysis)
Doe v. Renfrow, 631 F. 2d 91 (CA7 1980)

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Background

Opinion of the court

1. Summary of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence related to school searches

2. Elaboration of facts

3. These facts demonstrate a violation of Redding's Fourth Amendment rights

4. These school officials were entitled to qualified immunity

Justices Stevens and Ginsburg

Concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part

See also

External links