When school officials at Safford Unified School District got a tip from another student that eighth grade honor roll student Savana Redding had brought prescription strength Ibuprofen to school, they didn’t just question Savana. Nor did they just look through her bag or her jacket pockets. Instead, school officials pulled her from her classroom, brought her to the nurse’s office, and ordered her to strip down to her bra and underwear. They even went so far as to order 13-year-old Savana to expose her breasts and pelvic area so they could see if she was hiding any pills in her undergarments. And they never let her call her parents prior to this search. The school officials found nothing.
Savana and her mother sued the school district and the officials who participated in the search, alleging that the strip search was unreasonable under the Fourth Amendment. The case went up to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which held that school officials did not violate any of Savana’s rights when they strip searched her. The tip from Savana’s classmate was enough to justify the official’s need to conduct a strip search, the court held, even though the tip was uncorroborated and Savana had no prior disciplinary history.
Most 13-year-old girls are self-conscious and private about their bodies, and other courts have recognized that strip searching children and young teenagers can cause psychological damage. But this court did not seem to be worried about the potentially traumatizing and emotional harmful effects the search could have on Savana. This case makes it easier for school districts to conduct strip searches of students, without having a solid and justifiable reason.
Redding v. Safford Unified School District #1 (2007)
GOT RIGHTS? ONLY IF THE LAW THAT PROTECTS THEM SPECIFICALLY DETAILS WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT IF THOSE RIGHTS ARE VIOLATED.
A former university student brought suit against Gonzaga University, saying that the university had released private information about him in violation of the Federal Education Right to Privacy Act (FERPA). He claimed that the release of the information was a violation of his civil rights. In 2002, the Supreme Court held that because the law that the student was seeking to enforce did not include explicit rights-creating language, he couldn't enforce it. So although the university had violated federal law by releasing private information, the student was powerless to do anything about it.
Gonzaga v. Doe (2002)
Alida Gebser was thirteen years old when she met Frank Waldrup, who would later be one of her teachers during her first year of high school. In her school district in Lago Vista, Texas, class offerings for the most gifted students had just been cut, so Alida took Mr. Waldrup up on his offer to give her one-on-one lessons, in spite of his occasional illicit commentary. Their tutoring sessions quickly turned into a sexual relationship that lasted a year and a half until the police got involved.
Confused and violated, Alida and her family attempted to hold their school district accountable for Waldrup’s behavior. The case Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District was eventually appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled in 1998 that school districts can be held responsible only if they knew about the sexual harassment and refused to do anything about it. This decision is devastating in that it actually provides less recourse for children to file a complaint about harassment than the average adult employee – even the teachers in Alida’s school have more protection against unwanted advances than their vulnerable and impressionable charges.
Further, the Gebser case has been used as precedent to limit liability for damages for harassment based on race, color, and national origin, making it nearly impossible for victims of harassment to sue under Title IX, Title VI, or other related statutes in order to restore their sense of justice.
Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District (1998)
The Supreme Court last term resurrected "separate but equal" in our schools. Because of the Court’s ruling in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education, schools risk becoming more segregated, and children of all races will likely have fewer opportunities to learn together and become prepared to live and work in a diverse world.
Parents Involved in Community Schools involved a challenge to student admission plans in school districts in both Seattle, Washington and Louisville, Kentucky. Concerned about how racial isolation was affecting their own children and community, locally-elected school boards in Louisville and Seattle had adopted student assignment measures to foster integrated, diverse schools. The voluntary plans used modest measures to promote integration while prioritizing parental choice and community schools. As part of the plans, the school districts looked at race as a factor in determining whether or not to transfer a student. The programs in both Seattle and Louisville had been upheld by lower courts and were similar to programs in many school districts across the country.
But in a 5-4 decision, the Court held that the programs were unconstitutional because they violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment. The Court held that using race as a factor in assigning children to schools was discriminatory and could not be justified. The Court’s decision went against the tradition of Brown v. Board of Education, which declared “separate but equal” unconstitutional and held that all students have a right to attend integrated schools. As a result, school districts will find it incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to assign children to schools in a way that ensures diversity. Schools are once again becoming segregated by race as they were before Brown.
Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education (2007)
CAN UNIVERSITIES ENSURE A DIVERSE STUDENT BODY? VERY TRICKY.
Written into the civil rights laws of the 1960s, affirmative action was designed to ensure equal opportunity for groups that had long been discriminated against by employers and institutions. Michigan Law School, one of the nation's top law schools, modified its admission process to ensure the diversity of its student body. According to its admissions policy, the school looks for students with "substantial promise for success in law school" and who have "a strong likelihood of succeeding in the practice of law and contributing in diverse ways to the well-being of others" and "varying backgrounds and experiences who will respect and learn from each other."
When it denied admission to Barbara Grutter, a white Michigan resident, she sued, saying she was discriminated against on the basis of race. By a margin of only one vote (now-retired Justice O'Connor's) the Supreme Court decided in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) that it was legal for the law school to use race as one of the factors in deciding which students to admit. The Court found that diversity was valuable and that admissions policies can justify looking at race and ethnicity as factors in admissions in a carefully crafted policy to achieve diversity.
However, the use of race in admission must be limited, and is sometimes difficult to employ. In a companion case, the Supreme Court found University of Michigan's undergraduate admissions policy to be unlawful. The admissions process was also intended to encourage diversity and it considered many factors, including grades, test scores, high school quality, curriculum strength, where the student is from, relationships with college alumni, leadership potential, and race. Each factor including race was assigned a number of points toward a 100-point minimum for admission. This, the university argued, encouraged diversity and significantly contributed to a better educational environment.
The Supreme Court decided, however, that this admissions policy was unconstitutional because applicants from underrepresented groups were given points based on their race or ethnicity. Colleges and universities that attempt to foster and support diversity have to strike a very delicate balance. And now that the makeup of the Supreme Court has changed, and Justice O'Connor has retired, diversity in the schools hangs in the balance.
Grutter v. Bollinger (2003); Gratz v. Bollinger (2003).
Pearl and Theodore Murphy believed that their son who has a disability was not receiving the kind of public education that's guaranteed under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). They sued their school district to force it to provide the education the boy needed and the court decided the case in their favor. Many families can't afford to hire a lawyer, so the law allows families to request that school districts pay their fees and costs if they win the lawsuit under the IDEA, because getting children appropriate services is so important.
Though the district and circuit courts granted the Murphy's request, in 2006, the Supreme Court ruled against them. Through a narrow reading of the law, the majority of the Court decided that the costs of experts -- needed to prove a case -- could not be reimbursed. This decision makes it even more difficult for parents with limited resources to go to court to enforce their children's rights to the education they need. If parents have to cover the cost of getting expert opinions in order to prove their case, many children won't get appropriate services, just because their parents can't afford the legal costs.
Arlington Central School District v. Murphy (2006)
In 1988, a student called A.W. (courts use initials to protect the privacy of minors) enrolled in the Jersey City Public School system as a second grader. Because he has dyslexia, he had a very hard time learning how to read, write, and spell. His school system had no reading and writing program -- something required by law -- to help students with dyslexia learn and A.W. continued to fall behind other students of his age. A.W.'s grandmother filed a complaint with the New Jersey Department of Education on behalf of her grandson and other Jersey City students with dyslexia. The department confirmed that the schools had failed to implement any reading and writing program for students with dyslexia -- but then did nothing to ensure the schools did anything about it.
In 2000, 13 years after A.W. entered the Jersey City public school system, the school district finally implemented an educational program that required specialized instruction in reading, writing, and spelling. Although he finally received the education he deserved, A.W. was by then a 20-year-old tenth-grader and had missed out on years of critical learning, so he took his case to court.
A.W. sued under section 1983, a federal statute that creates a right for an individual to bring a lawsuit when their rights were violated by a state. A.W. claimed that his rights were violated because the state failed to abide by two important federal statutes. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973 prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in any program that receives federal funding. The Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act guarantees all children with disabilities a "free appropriate public education" that meets their specific needs.
Up until this case, parents and children were able to sue public school systems and their employees under section 1983 for violations of these two acts. But that changed when the Court of Appeals said that A.W. could not sue under section 1983. Now students like A.W. cannot seek compensation for their losses.
A.W. v. Jersey City Public Schools (2007)
For more information on access to education, go to that section.