The Supreme Court says a school's strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.
The court ruled 8-1 on Thursday that school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding, who lives in Safford in rural eastern Arizona.
Redding was a 13-year-old honor student when she was called to the principal's office.
Officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
The school was acting on a tip from another student who was found carrying ibuprofen pills and tried to blame Savana as the source.
"Once they got me into my underwear I thought they would let me put my clothes back on," she told CBS News correspondent Hattie Kauffman. "But then they told me to pull out my bra and shake it, and my underwear as well."
In his opinion, Justice David Souter wrote that the Court has to now applied a standard of "reasonable suspicion" to determine the legality of a school administrator’s search of a student, and that they not be "excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction. . . . " - CBS News Story
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