Alaska Employment Law

The 9th Circuit, en banc and via Judge Kim Wardlaw, has held:

On the basis of an uncorroborated tip from the culpable eighth grader, public middle school officials searched futilely for prescription-strength ibuprofen by strip-searching thirteen year-old honor student Savana Redding. We conclude that the school officials violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. The strip search of Savana was neither “justified at its inception,” New Jersey v. T.L.O., 469 U.S. 325, 341 (1985), nor, as a grossly intrusive search of a middle school girl to locate pills with the potency of two over-the-counter Advil capsules, “reasonably related in scope to the circumstances” giving rise to its initiation.  Id.  Because these constitutional principles were clearly established at the time that middle school officials directed and conducted the search, the school official in charge is not entitled to qualified immunity from suit for the unconstitutional strip search of Savana.

Redding v. Sanford United School District #1, 2008 WL _______ (9th Cir. July 11, 2008)