Safford Unified School District No. 1 V. Redding and the Future of School Strip Searches‪.‬

Every year in America, an unknown number of children in primary and secondary schools are strip-searched by teachers or school administrators, forced to remove pants and shirts, and sometimes to expose their breasts and genitals, or even appear naked before school officials. While most strip searches are individual, some students have been compelled to undress in the presence of their peers. (1) In some of these cases, it is not clear whether school officials are searching for contraband--usually drugs, missing money, or stolen items--or seeking to discipline, humiliate, (2) or simply exert authority over the students. (3) Strip searches generally come to light only when a student has the courage to tell a parent what happened, and the parent is sufficiently outraged to complain or sue the school. In other cases, strip searches are uncovered because of the particularly egregious factual circumstances surrounding them. Some of these cases will then be reported in the media, but will eventually disappear for lack of follow-up. Some have resulted in federal civil rights lawsuits, many of which are resolved through summary judgment. (4) Others have likely gone unreported. Only a handful of states prohibit strip searches entirely. (5) Although some states have standards governing school searches generally, most have failed to adopt specific parameters for strip searches. (6) Other states explicitly leave it to school boards and local schools to develop governing standards. (7) The vast majority, however, have no policy at all. (8)