School officials can be sued for strip search, court rules

School officials can be sued for strip search, court rules
Piketon tech students seek damages

CINCINNATI -- A federal appeals panel ruled yesterday that staffers at an Ohio vocational school can be sued by high-school nursing students who were strip-searched after a reported theft.

The three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected immunity for the school officials, standing by an earlier conclusion that the 2006 search was unconstitutional.

The U.S. Supreme Court sent the case back last year after ruling in a similar case that school officials violated an Arizona teen's rights in a strip search for a prescription-strength drug, but that the officials weren't financially liable.

The Cincinnati-based appeals court said officials of the Vern Riffe Career Technology Center in Piketon, in Pike County, should have known the search was unreasonable for reasons including the lack of suspects and that the issue was missing money, not health or safety.

The court said it had rejected such wide-scale searches in 2005 in a case in which a school strip-searched some 25 students because of missing prom money.

http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/local_news/stories/2010/05/15/school-officials-can-be-sued-for-strip-search-court-rules.html?type=rss&cat=&sid=101

I doubt the decision to strip search kids was made by teachers.

The school officials involved should also face jail time.

Why should teachers be blamed for the decisions made by school officials?

Is that better? Be instructive to know who reported the "theft".

There was something similar at my daughter's school. Student was accused of theft by a teacher. Teacher demanded the student be searched. When my daughter and several others vouched for that student being elsewhere, the teacher insisted that they all be searched. My daughter went up to the teacher and said "You must not like being a teacher very much, do you?" Teacher went berserk claiming she had just been threatened. My daughter defended the question since she had never seen the teacher be anything but mean and nasty toward students. Admin told the teacher to back off and my daughter to refrain from pursuing that topic then or later. The classroom was searched first. Turns out the missing item had been misplaced. No apologies from the teacher for the false accusations she made. Several students had already requested transfers from her classes, but after that the number skyrocketed. She left the school at the end of the year.

So would you have blamed the teacher in this incident?

That is all. If you want to turn this into a teacher bashing discussion, have at it. But the OP is not about teachers. Teachers are not school officials. If teachers do decide to behave like school officials and strip search kids then they would be wrong.

The experience I cited for example