Strip Searching Students -- And Empathy For Whom?

Submitted by anthony on Fri, 2009-06-26 21:34

Article here. Excerpt:

'The separate Ginsburg dissent alluded only obliquely to her apparent view that strip searching a 13-year-old girl is worse than strip searching a 13-year-old boy, as she implied in an interview with Joan Biskupic of USA Today several weeks ago that has won widespread applause. To illustrate why the court needs more women, Ginsburg complained to Biskupic that some of her male colleagues' comments during the April 21 oral argument showed that they did not understand what a "sensitive age" 13 was for Savana because "they have never been a 13-year-old girl."

I agree that the court needs more women. I also agree that as a general rule, because of anatomical and perhaps other differences, it may well be more traumatic for 13-year-old girls -- I have never been one, but have raised two -- to strip in front of authority figures than for boys to do so.

But how relevant should such distinctions be to Fourth Amendment law? If some other case comes along in which school officials want to strip search a 13-year-old boy for ibuprofen pills, should they go ahead because boys are used to running around naked in locker rooms?

Memo to school officials: Don't try it. But perhaps some senator should ask Judge Sonia Sotomayor at her Supreme Court confirmation hearing whether girls and women should enjoy broader constitutional protections than boys and men in such cases, and perhaps in others, too.'

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Comments

Not as far as Ginsburg's concerned.

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Submitted by anthony on Mon, 2009-06-29 05:05

If girls are allowed to avoid being searched for drugs because they are girls, then boys should not be searched either.

Either make the delicate flowers toughen up as the boys are made to do through locker room torment or allow the boys the same protection the fragile little girls are given. What you think boys are comfortable stripping naked naturally? No. They are just forced to 'man up' and learn to accept that which they cannot change. That's why men take abuse in the first place cause they have been taught from birth that they must be a man and take it.

One cannot reasonable claim equality whilst accepting inequalities perpetrated on males and condemning actions perpetrated against females that are only traumatic due to gender advantages given to females.

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Submitted by Paragon on Mon, 2009-06-29 17:41

I can always count on quality comments from Paragon

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Submitted by anthony on Mon, 2009-06-29 20:23