Supreme Court Upholds Students’ Strip Searches

The strip search of two 8-year-old Alabama schoolgirls over a missing $7 did not so clearly violate the Constitution’s ban on “unreasonable searches” as to permit a damage suit against school officials, according to a ruling that the Supreme Court let stand Monday.

The case illustrates how more conservative federal judges have shrunk the scope of individual rights and given public officials a broader shield from damage suits.

In general, public officials cannot be sued for damages in federal court unless they violate a “clearly established” constitutional right. This doctrine, known as “qualified immunity,” protects police, school authorities and city officials from being second-guessed.

As a result, however, many lawsuits are thrown out before a trial if a judge concludes that no “clearly established” right was violated. And often the judge says that no right is clearly established until the Supreme Court says it is.

That is just what happened in the case of Cassandra Jenkins and Oneika McKenzie, who were second-graders in a Talladega, Ala., public school in 1992.

On May 1, one pupil told the girls’ teacher that $7 had been taken from her purse. Another child said she saw one of the girls put the money in a backpack. One student said a boy had taken the money.

The two girls were taken to a hallway and questioned. A music teacher, Susannah Herring, took the two girls to a bathroom and allegedly ordered them to remove their clothes. No money was found. Later, after the principal questioned the three, another teacher took the girls back to the bathroom and again ordered them to remove their clothes. Again, nothing was found.

The parents of the two girls filed a damage suit against the teachers, claiming that their daughters had been subjected to an “unreasonable search” in violation of the 4th Amendment.

In 1985, the Supreme Court agreed that the 4th Amendment protects a student’s right to privacy at school. It also agreed, however, that teachers and principals can search lockers or purses if they suspect a student is, for example, hiding drugs there.

Because the law on student searches is not “clearly established,” U.S. District Judge Robert Propst in Birmingham threw out the lawsuit filed by the girls’ parents in 1995. The conduct of the teachers, while questionable, was not clearly illegal, he ruled.

In June, the U.S. court of appeals in Atlanta upheld that decision on an 8-3 vote. The high court’s pronouncements do not “compel the conclusion that all reasonable educators should have known that their conduct [in the strip search case] violated a clearly established constitutional right,” the appeals court said.

Lawyers for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund urged the Supreme Court to rule on the matter. Without comment, the justices refused Monday to hear the case (Jenkins and McKenzie vs. Herring, 97-381).