Supreme Court To Hear School Strip-Search Case

Redding says she was then asked to strip down to her underwear and stood there while the nurse and secretary inspected her clothes and shoes.

“Then, you know, I thought they were going to let me put my clothes back on, but instead they asked me to pull out my bra and shake it, and the crotch on my underwear, too,” Redding says.

Redding says her whole body was visible to the school administrators. She kept her head down so the nurse and the secretary couldn’t see her fighting back tears.

“When you’re that age, you’re going through puberty, [and] you’re embarrassed of your body as it is,” Redding says. “Let alone to have to sit there and stand pretty much naked in front of professional people that you would see every day almost. It’s just pretty horrible.”

School officials found nothing, but Redding was not allowed to return to class that day.

The Supreme Court ruled in 1985 that schools may conduct searches of a student’s purse or backpack without a warrant, but the court did not then address the question of an intimate search.

Among the reasons given to justify the search: One youngster had already ended up in the hospital from taking drugs, and another student had reported more drugs were about to be given out. School administrators said Redding was seen at a dance early in the year among a group of kids believed to have had alcohol on their breath. Probably most damaging, one youngster who had been found with 400 milligrams of prescription-strength ibuprofen said on the day of the search that she got it from Redding.

Because kids always speak the truth.