Strip-Search Case Testing Balance Between Privacy, Student Safety

Washington

As it weighs the high-profile case of a 13-year-old girl strip-searched at school, the U.S. Supreme Court is grappling with where to draw the line between protecting student privacy rights and allowing school officials to take steps to ensure a safe environment.

During oral arguments last week, several of the justices seemed sympathetic to the challenges schools face in combating drug use—the motive for the search in an Arizona district—but it remained unclear how far they might go in allowing administrators discretion to conduct strip-searches.

Justice David H. Souter said that "at some point it gets silly" if school officials are searching for something like an aspirin tablet—in the case in question, the student was suspected...