Middle school student strip-searched

(NBC) - Even school officials agree: Strip searching a 13-year-old sounds excessive, but they argued on Tuesday the court has to balance her privacy with their obligation to protect other students.

From rural Arizona comes a case that tests the limits of the U.S. Constitution: A student at Safford Middle School caught with prescription Ibuprofen told administrators she got the pills from 13-year-old Savana Redding. So the school nurse had Savana strip down to her underwear and expose her private parts. They found nothing. Savana said she was humiliated.

"I was wondering what they could possibly want from me, like, what did I do wrong," said Savana Redding.

"I felt bad that I wasn't there to protect her," said April Redding, Savana's mother.

School officials argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday that the search was necessary to protect others from drugs that had almost killed a student one year earlier.

"These are, these are teachers who love kids, who are trying to protect kids," said Matthew Wright, attorney for Safford Unified School District.

The justices questioned whether one uncorroborated tip constitutes reasonable suspicion.

"We don't allow guesswork to dictate searches underneath a 13-year-old girl's underpants," said Adam Wolf, ACLU attorney for plaintiff.

And, the justices asked, where do you draw the line? Might a cavity search be justified? Is it relevant, they wondered, how deadly the drug is, or how soon it is expected to be distributed? Educators say they need flexibility to keep schools safe.

"If this court does not uphold this search, then administrators will just stop trying to intradict," said Wright.

Personal tragedy is what Savana Redding remembers. Five years later, she says she thinks about it every day.

"I don't trust hardly anyone anymore," said Savana Redding. "I feel like everyone's going to lure me into a false sense of security and then just uh...I don't know."

Since the search happened, 189 of Arizona's 247 school districts have changed their policies to restrict strip searches of students, including the district in this case.