North Carolina's Supreme Court will decide if allowing school bra searches is a violation of Constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.
The case involves controversy over a 2008 drug search of a girl at a Brunswick County school. She was taken into a private area, with male and female adults present, and told to untuck her shirt and pull her bra away from her body. The student asked courts to disallow the evidence (a pain pill and "paraphernalia") found in the search, because it violated her right to privacy. The court of appeals agreed, but the State appealed.
Several girls were searched that day, one at a time, but there's no evidence any boys were. Under the circumstances it seems the court should also be considering an investigation into sexual discrimination.
If these violations are allowed, what's next?
Tell NC Schools to Protect Students' Privacy Rights and Stop Discriminating Against Female Students.
We, the undersigned, are concerned about the multiple violations of students who were forced to participate in a bra search conducted by officials at a Brunswick County school.
We can appreciate the concern over drugs being brought into the schools, however, do two or three wrongs make anything right?
Should the school be allowed to humiliate female students and single them out for searches that are indeed violations of the right to privacy, as well as civil rights when girls, alone, must undergo underwear searches?
On top of this issue are concerns voiced by a growing group of parents, saying that schools are hypocritical in their attitudes towards drugs and other neurotoxins. For example, teachers, assisted by social workers, often insist parents put children on mind-altering drugs like Ritalin or even controversial antidepressants and antipsychotics, and this scenario is beginning to include even pre-school children. Often parents who don't want to drug their kids have their parental rights taken from them and children put in foster homes, where the GAO has just confirmed that a large percent are prescribed a toxic mix of mind-altering drugs.
Furthermore, N.C. schools have for decades treated schools with a mix of very toxic pesticide chemicals, like Dursban, a chlorpyrifos known to cause neurological and other effects and damage, - even though less toxic alternatives were available.
It seems schools systems that want to teach students to steer clear of poisons like drugs, should first set an example by providing non-toxic learning environments and non-drug approaches to behavior problems.
However the schools choose to deal with the illegal drug problem, doing so by violating students' Constitutional rights is the wrong way to approach it.
Please stop violating students' rights!
Thank you for your attention to these concerns and suggestions.
