No. 08–479. Argued April 21, 2009—Decided June 25, 2009
After escorting 13-year-old Savana Redding from her middle school
classroom to his office, Assistant Principal Wilson showed her a day
planner containing knives and other contraband. She admitted owning
the planner, but said that she had lent it to her friend Marissa
and that the contraband was not hers. He then produced four prescription-
strength, and one over-the-counter, pain relief pills, all of
which are banned under school rules without advance permission.
She denied knowledge of them, but Wilson said that he had a report
that she was giving pills to fellow students. She denied it and agreed
to let him search her belongings. He and Helen Romero, an administrative
assistant, searched Savana’s backpack, finding nothing. Wilson
then had Romero take Savana to the school nurse’s office to
search her clothes for pills. After Romero and the nurse, Peggy
Schwallier, had Savana remove her outer clothing, they told her to
pull her bra out and shake it, and to pull out the elastic on her underpants,
thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree.
No pills were found. Savana’s mother filed suit against petitioner
school district (Safford), Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier, alleging
that the strip search violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Claiming qualified immunity, the individuals (hereinafter petitioners)
moved for summary judgment. The District Court granted the
motion, finding that there was no Fourth Amendment violation, and
the en banc Ninth Circuit reversed. Following the protocol for evaluating
qualified immunity claims, see Saucier v. Katz, 533 U. S. 194,
200, the court held that the strip search was unjustified under the
Fourth Amendment test for searches of children by school officials set
out in New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325. It then applied the test
2 SAFFORD UNIFIED SCHOOL DIST. #1 v. REDDING
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for qualified immunity. Finding that Savana’s right was clearly established
at the time of the search, it reversed the summary judgment
as to Wilson, but affirmed as to Schwallier and Romero because
they were not independent decisionmakers.
Held:
1. The search of Savana’s underwear violated the Fourth Amendment.
Pp. 3–11.
(a) For school searches, “the public interest is best served by a
Fourth Amendment standard of reasonableness that stops short of
probable cause.” T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 341. Under the resulting reasonable
suspicion standard, a school search “will be permissible . . .
when the measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives
of the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex
of the student and the nature of the infraction.” Id., at 342. The required
knowledge component of reasonable suspicion for a school administrator’s
evidence search is that it raise a moderate chance of
finding evidence of wrongdoing. Pp. 3–5.
(b) Wilson had sufficient suspicion to justify searching Savana’s
backpack and outer clothing. A week earlier, a student, Jordan, had
told the principal and Wilson that students were bringing drugs and
weapons to school and that he had gotten sick from some pills. On
the day of the search, Jordan gave Wilson a pill that he said came
from Marissa. Learning that the pill was prescription strength, Wilson
called Marissa out of class and was handed the day planner.
Once in his office, Wilson, with Romero present, had Marissa turn
out her pockets and open her wallet, producing, inter alia, an overthe-
counter pill that Marissa claimed was Savana’s. She also denied
knowing about the day planner’s contents. Wilson did not ask her
when she received the pills from Savana or where Savana might be
hiding them. After a search of Marissa’s underwear by Romero and
Schwallier revealed no additional pills, Wilson called Savana into his
office. He showed her the day planner and confirmed her relationship
with Marissa. He knew that the girls had been identified as
part of an unusually rowdy group at a school dance, during which alcohol
and cigarettes were found in the girls’ bathroom. He had other
reasons to connect them with this contraband, for Jordan had told
the principal that before the dance, he had attended a party at Savana’s
house where alcohol was served. Thus, Marissa’s statement
that the pills came from Savana was sufficiently plausible to warrant
suspicion that Savana was involved in pill distribution. A student
who is reasonably suspected of giving out contraband pills is reasonably
suspected of carrying them on her person and in her backpack.
Looking into Savana’s bag, in her presence and in the relative
privacy of Wilson’s office, was not excessively intrusive, any more
Cite as: 557 U. S. ____ (2009) 3
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than Romero’s subsequent search of her outer clothing. Pp. 5–8.
(c) Because the suspected facts pointing to Savana did not indicate
that the drugs presented a danger to students or were concealed
in her underwear, Wilson did not have sufficient suspicion to warrant
extending the search to the point of making Savana pull out her underwear.
Romero and Schwallier said that they did not see anything
when Savana pulled out her underwear, but a strip search and its
Fourth Amendment consequences are not defined by who was looking
and how much was seen. Savana’s actions in their presence necessarily
exposed her breasts and pelvic area to some degree, and both
subjective and reasonable societal expectations of personal privacy
support the treatment of such a search as categorically distinct, requiring
distinct elements of justification on the part of school authorities
for going beyond a search of outer clothing and belongings. Savana’s
subjective expectation of privacy is inherent in her account of
it as embarrassing, frightening, and humiliating. The reasonableness
of her expectation is indicated by the common reaction of other
young people similarly searched, whose adolescent vulnerability intensifies
the exposure’s patent intrusiveness. Its indignity does not
outlaw the search, but it does implicate the rule that “the search [be]
‘reasonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the
interference in the first place.’ ” T. L. O., supra, at 341. Here, the
content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of intrusion. Because
Wilson knew that the pills were common pain relievers, he
must have known of their nature and limited threat and had no reason
to suspect that large amounts were being passed around or that
individual students had great quantities. Nor could he have suspected
that Savana was hiding common painkillers in her underwear.
When suspected facts must support the categorically extreme intrusiveness
of a search down to an adolescent’s body, petitioners’ general
belief that students hide contraband in their clothing falls short; a
reasonable search that extensive calls for suspicion that it will succeed.
Nondangerous school contraband does not conjure up the specter
of stashes in intimate places, and there is no evidence of such behavior
at the school; neither Jordan nor Marissa suggested that
Savana was doing that, and the search of Marissa yielded nothing.
Wilson also never determined when Marissa had received the pills
from Savana; had it been a few days before, that would weigh heavily
against any reasonable conclusion that Savana presently had the
pills on her person, much less in her underwear. Pp. 8–11.
2. Although the strip search violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment
rights, petitioners Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier are protected from
liability by qualified immunity because “clearly established law [did]
not show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment,” Pearson
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v. Callahan, 555 U. S. ___, ___. The intrusiveness of the strip search
here cannot, under T. L. O., be seen as justifiably related to the circumstances,
but lower court cases viewing school strip searches differently
are numerous enough, with well-reasoned majority and dissenting
opinions, to counsel doubt about the clarity with which the
right was previously stated. Pp. 11–13.
3. The issue of petitioner Safford’s liability under Monell v. New
York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 694, should be addressed
on remand. P. 13.
531 F. 3d 1071, affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS,
C. J., and SCALIA, KENNEDY, BREYER, and ALITO, JJ., joined, and in
which STEVENS and GINSBURG, JJ., joined as to Parts I–III. STEVENS, J.,
filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which
GINSBURG, J., joined. GINSBURG, J., filed an opinion concurring in part
and dissenting in part. THOMAS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the
judgment in part and dissenting in part.
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