Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the case of the 13-year-old girl strip-searched at school
The state of Virginia argued to the court at the time that women could not handle tough military training, and it set up a separate program at Mary Baldwin College that Ginsburg wrote in the opinion was a “pale” imitation of the VMI program. That violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, she wrote.
But another case served to underscore the humanity with which she approached her decisions and why many court watchers say it is so important for the Supreme Court to include a diverse group of justices with different experiences and points of view.
The case was Safford Unified School District v. Redding, in which the court in 2009 ruled that the strip search of a 13-year-old girl at her school in Arizona was unconstitutional. Justice David Souter wrote the opinion for the majority, which included Ginsburg, who also wrote her own opinion explaining why she agreed with parts of the majority but dissented from another.
The girl, Savana Redding, was in math class at Safford Middle School when Assistant Principal Kerry Wilson escorted her to his office and told her she had been accused of giving out pain medication — both prescription and over-the-counter — to other students. The accuser was a student who had been caught with some of the medication. Redding, who had no history of disciplinary problems at the school, denied it.
School officials searched her belongings but found nothing, and then, with no reason to think that any pills were on her person, told her to remove her outer clothing and allow them to see under her bra and underpants to continue the search. She complied; they did not find any pills. CONTINUE READING: Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the case of the 13-year-old girl strip-searched at school - The Washington Post
