Big school privacy case to go before Supreme Court

[Kevin]

Sen, the "danger" here was that of ibuprofen pills, in other words, there is no rational relationship of the danger posed by the presence of prescription ibuprofen pills to the intrusiveness of the search. If the search, however, was for something else which posed a real threat, e.g., a weapon of some sort, narcotics, or something of that nature, I think the search would have been more justified.

Here, the health and safety of other students was not threatened at all, thus a search, particularly one this intrusive wasn't justified. The lawyers for the school district wrap themselves up in a big 'ol 'illicit drug prevention' banner. Well, this was ibuprofen, not ecstasy.

Zero tolerance policies tend to lead to insane results like this which seem so ridiculously unlikely and lacking in common sense that one is tempted to high tail it over to snopes to see if the story is a hoax. I hope the court finds that the student's rights were violated and pronounces something along these lines -- the degree of the intrusion of the search must bear some rational relationship to the potential danger posed. For something like ibuprofen, the school might reasonably expect to search the student's belongings and have her turn out her pockets. If the accusation tendered is that she has something on the order of illicit drugs, more intrusive measures will be justifiable.

We hire these administrators because we think they have the ability to exercise good judgment. Zero tolerance policies are essentially admissions that these people have poor judgment. I think we're all better off if we live in a society which expects the best from administrators rather than the worst.