Well, despite the Supreme Court's track record with student rights, I'm happy with at least one decision coming out of this session:
In a sane 8-to-1 ruling, the United States Supreme Court decided that school officials in Arizona did not have the right to strip-search a 13-year-old girl for contraband ibuprofen.
The strip-search occurred when Savana Redding, who is now a college student, was an 8th grader at Safford Middle School in the rural Arizona town of Safford. After a search of her backpack produced no banned substances, she was ordered to strip to her underwear.
The one bozo who ruled against it? Noted pornography enthusiast Clarence Thomas, whose dissent reveals an archaic understanding of the word 'secrete':
Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.
Amanda Marcotte questions the scope of the decision - this same Supreme Court has certainly imposed outrageous boundaries on the behavior of students in recent years, most notably in 2007, when they ruled against Joseph Frederick, an Alaskan student suspended for holding a sign reading 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' at a non-school function off of school grounds. And it in no way addressed the concerns of Redding's case - that a bottle of 400mg Advil should not be considered contraband simply because it's in the possession of a minor on school grounds. I'd argue however that this is a big win -- it reflects a mindset that even though students aren't guaranteed the same rights as other American citizens (*cough*), a young woman has a right to bodily autonomy that some fascist/sadist principal can't take away. A strip search is not a legitimate means of ascertaining information: it is a form of punishment, an extreme method of humiliation. This is why we stripped prisoners at Gitmo: to humiliate them.
So to wit: despite their architectural similarities, the Supreme Court has today issued that American schools can't be run like prisons. Hurrah.
SCOTUS Decision on Strip-Searching a Minor
Well, despite the Supreme Court's track record with student rights, I'm happy with at least one decision coming out of this session:
The one bozo who ruled against it? Noted pornography enthusiast Clarence Thomas, whose dissent reveals an archaic understanding of the word 'secrete':
Amanda Marcotte questions the scope of the decision - this same Supreme Court has certainly imposed outrageous boundaries on the behavior of students in recent years, most notably in 2007, when they ruled against Joseph Frederick, an Alaskan student suspended for holding a sign reading 'Bong Hits 4 Jesus' at a non-school function off of school grounds. And it in no way addressed the concerns of Redding's case - that a bottle of 400mg Advil should not be considered contraband simply because it's in the possession of a minor on school grounds. I'd argue however that this is a big win -- it reflects a mindset that even though students aren't guaranteed the same rights as other American citizens (*cough*), a young woman has a right to bodily autonomy that some fascist/sadist principal can't take away. A strip search is not a legitimate means of ascertaining information: it is a form of punishment, an extreme method of humiliation. This is why we stripped prisoners at Gitmo: to humiliate them.
So to wit: despite their architectural similarities, the Supreme Court has today issued that American schools can't be run like prisons. Hurrah.