SAFFORD UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT #1 et al. v. REDDING

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364 OCTOBER TERM, 2008
Syllabus
SAFFORD UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT #1 et al. v.
REDDING
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the ninth circuit
No. 08–479. Argued April 21, 2009—Decided June 25, 2009
After escorting 13-year-old Savana Redding from her middle school class
room to his office, Assistant Principal Wilson showed her a day planner
containing knives and other contraband. She admitted owning the
planner, but said that she had lent it to her friend Marissa and that the
contraband was not hers. He then produced four prescription-strength,
and one over-the-counter, pain relief pills, all of which are banned under
school rules without advance permission. She denied knowledge of
them, but Wilson said that he had a report that she was giving pills to
fellow students. She denied it and agreed to let him search her belong
ings. He and Helen Romero, an administrative assistant, searched Sa
vana’s backpack, finding nothing. Wilson then had Romero take Savana
to the school nurse’s office to search her clothes for pills. After Romero
and the nurse, Peggy Schwallier, had Savana remove her outer clothing,
they told her to pull her bra out and shake it, and to pull out the elastic
on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some
degree. No pills were found. Savana’s mother filed suit against peti
tioner school district (Safford), Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier, alleging
that the strip search violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment rights.
Claiming qualified immunity, the individuals (hereinafter petitioners)
moved for summary judgment. The District Court granted the motion,
finding that there was no Fourth Amendment violation, and the en banc
Ninth Circuit reversed. Following the protocol for evaluating qualified
immunity claims, see Saucier v. Katz, 533 U. S. 194, 200, the court held
that the strip search was unjustified under the Fourth Amendment test
for searches of children by school officials set out in New Jersey v.
T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325. It then applied the test for qualified immunity.
Finding that Savana’s right was clearly established at the time of the
search, it reversed the summary judgment as to Wilson, but affirmed
as to Schwallier and Romero because they were not independent
decisionmakers.
Held:
1. The search of Savana’s underwear violated the Fourth Amend
ment. Pp. 370–377.

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(a) For school searches, “the public interest is best served by a
Fourth Amendment standard of reasonableness that stops short of prob
able cause.” T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 341. Under the resulting reasonable
suspicion standard, a school search “will be permissible . . . when the
measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the search
and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student
and the nature of the infraction.” Id., at 342. The required knowledge
component of reasonable suspicion for a school administrator’s evidence
search is that it raise a moderate chance of finding evidence of wrongdo
ing. Pp. 370–371.
(b) Wilson had sufficient suspicion to justify searching Savana’s
backpack and outer clothing. A week earlier, a student, Jordan, had
told the principal and Wilson that students were bringing drugs and
weapons to school and that he had gotten sick from some pills. On the
day of the search, Jordan gave Wilson a pill that he said came from
Marissa. Learning that the pill was prescription strength, Wilson
called Marissa out of class and was handed the day planner. Once in
his office, Wilson, with Romero present, had Marissa turn out her pock
ets and open her wallet, producing, inter alia, an over-the-counter pill
that Marissa claimed was Savana’s. She also denied knowing about the
day planner’s contents. Wilson did not ask her when she received the
pills from Savana or where Savana might be hiding them. After a
search of Marissa’s underwear by Romero and Schwallier revealed no
additional pills, Wilson called Savana into his office. He showed her
the day planner and confirmed her relationship with Marissa. He knew
that the girls had been identified as part of an unusually rowdy group
at a school dance, during which alcohol and cigarettes were found in
the girls’ bathroom. He had other reasons to connect them with this
contraband, for Jordan had told the principal that before the dance, he
had attended a party at Savana’s house where alcohol was served.
Thus, Marissa’s statement that the pills came from Savana was suf
ficiently plausible to warrant suspicion that Savana was involved in pill
distribution. A student who is reasonably suspected of giving out con
traband pills is reasonably suspected of carrying them on her person
and in her backpack. Looking into Savana’s bag, in her presence and
in the relative privacy of Wilson’s office, was not excessively intrusive,
any more than Romero’s subsequent search of her outer clothing.
Pp. 371–374.
(c) Because the suspected facts pointing to Savana did not indicate
that the drugs presented a danger to students or were concealed in her
underwear, Wilson did not have sufficient suspicion to warrant extend
ing the search to the point of making Savana pull out her underwear.

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366 SAFFORD UNIFIED SCHOOL DIST. #1 v. REDDING
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Romero and Schwallier said that they did not see anything when Savana
pulled out her underwear, but a strip search and its Fourth Amendment
consequences are not defined by who was looking and how much was
seen. Savana’s actions in their presence necessarily exposed her
breasts and pelvic area to some degree, and both subjective and reason
able societal expectations of personal privacy support the treatment of
such a search as categorically distinct, requiring distinct elements of
justification on the part of school authorities for going beyond a search
of outer clothing and belongings. Savana’s subjective expectation of
privacy is inherent in her account of it as embarrassing, frightening, and
humiliating. The reasonableness of her expectation is indicated by the
common reaction of other young people similarly searched, whose ado
lescent vulnerability intensifies the exposure’s patent intrusiveness.
Its indignity does not outlaw the search, but it does implicate the rule
that “the search [be] ‘reasonably related in scope to the circumstances
which justified the interference in the first place.’ ” T. L. O., supra, at
341. Here, the content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of
intrusion. Because Wilson knew that the pills were common pain re
lievers, he must have known of their nature and limited threat and had
no reason to suspect that large amounts were being passed around or
that individual students had great quantities. Nor could he have sus
pected that Savana was hiding common painkillers in her underwear.
When suspected facts must support the categorically extreme intrusive
ness of a search down to an adolescent’s body, petitioners’ general belief
that students hide contraband in their clothing falls short; a reasonable
search that extensive calls for suspicion that it will succeed. Nondan
gerous school contraband does not conjure up the specter of stashes in
intimate places, and there is no evidence of such behavior at the school;
neither Jordan nor Marissa suggested that Savana was doing that, and
the search of Marissa yielded nothing. Wilson also never determined
when Marissa had received the pills from Savana; had it been a few days
before, that would weigh heavily against any reasonable conclusion that
Savana presently had the pills on her person, much less in her under
wear. Pp. 374–377.
2. Although the strip search violated Savana’s Fourth Amendment
rights, petitioners Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier are protected from
liability by qualified immunity because “clearly established law [did] not
show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment,” Pearson v. Cal
lahan, 555 U. S. 223, 243–244. The intrusiveness of the strip search
here cannot, under T. L. O., be seen as justifiably related to the circum
stances, but lower court cases viewing school strip searches differently
are numerous enough, with well-reasoned majority and dissenting opin

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ions, to counsel doubt about the clarity with which the right was pre
viously stated. Pp. 377–379.
3. The issue of petitioner Safford’s liability under Monell v. New York
City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 694, should be addressed on
remand. P. 379.
531 F. 3d 1071, affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.
Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J.,
and Scalia, Kennedy, Breyer, and Alito, JJ., joined, and in which Ste
vens and Ginsburg, JJ., joined as to Parts I–III. Stevens, J., filed an
opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, in which Ginsburg, J.,
joined, post, p. 379. Ginsburg, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and
dissenting in part, post, p. 381. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in
the judgment in part and dissenting in part, post, p. 382.
Matthew W. Wright argued the cause for petitioners.
With him on the briefs was David K. Pauole.
David A. O’Neil argued the cause for the United States
as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief
were then-Acting Solicitor General Kneedler, Acting As
sistant Attorney General Hertz, Deputy Solicitor General
Katyal, Leonard Schaitman, Robert Kamenshine, Mark
Pennak, Edward H. Jurith, Linda V. Priebe, Philip H. Ro
senfelt, Stephen H. Freid, Daniel J. Dell’Orto, and Karen
L. Lambert.
Adam B. Wolf argued the cause for respondent. With
him on the brief were Graham A. Boyd, M. Allen Hopper,
Steven R. Shapiro, Bruce G. Macdonald, Andrew J. Pe
tersen, and Daniel Joseph Pochoda.*
*David R. Day, Francisco M. Negro´ n, Jr., and Thomas E. M. Hutton
filed a brief for the National School Boards Association et al. as amici
curiae urging reversal.
Briefs of amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for the Juvenile Law
Center et al. by Marsha L. Levick; for the National Association of Social
Workers et al. by Julia M. Carpenter, Carolyn I. Polowy, and Michael D.
Simpson; for the Rutherford Institute et al. by John W. Whitehead, Clint
Bolick, Nicholas C. Dranias, Timothy Lynch, and Ilya Shapiro; and for
the Urban Justice Center et al. by Raymond H. Brescia.

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368 SAFFORD UNIFIED SCHOOL DIST. #1 v. REDDING
Opinion of the Court
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court.
The issue here is whether a 13-year-old student’s Fourth
Amendment right was violated when she was subjected to a
search of her bra and underpants by school officials acting
on reasonable suspicion that she had brought forbidden pre
scription and over-the-counter drugs to school. Because
there were no reasons to suspect the drugs presented a dan
ger or were concealed in her underwear, we hold that the
search did violate the Constitution, but because there is rea
son to question the clarity with which the right was estab
lished, the official who ordered the unconstitutional search is
entitled to qualified immunity from liability.
I
The events immediately prior to the search in question
began in 13-year-old Savana Redding’s math class at Safford
Middle School one October day in 2003. The assistant prin
cipal of the school, Kerry Wilson, came into the room and
asked Savana to go to his office. There, he showed her a
day planner, unzipped and open flat on his desk, in which
there were several knives, lighters, a permanent marker, and
a cigarette. Wilson asked Savana whether the planner was
hers; she said it was, but that a few days before she had lent
it to her friend, Marissa Glines. Savana stated that none of
the items in the planner belonged to her.
Wilson then showed Savana four white prescription
strength ibuprofen 400-mg pills, and one over-the-counter
blue naproxen 200-mg pill, all used for pain and inflammation
but banned under school rules without advance permission.
He asked Savana if she knew anything about the pills. Sa
vana answered that she did not. Wilson then told Savana
that he had received a report that she was giving these pills
to fellow students; Savana denied it and agreed to let Wilson
search her belongings. Helen Romero, an administrative as
sistant, came into the office, and together with Wilson they
searched Savana’s backpack, finding nothing.

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At that point, Wilson instructed Romero to take Savana
to the school nurse’s office to search her clothes for pills.
Romero and the nurse, Peggy Schwallier, asked Savana to
remove her jacket, socks, and shoes, leaving her in stretch
pants and a T-shirt (both without pockets), which she was
then asked to remove. Finally, Savana was told to pull her
bra out and to the side and shake it, and to pull out the elastic
on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area
to some degree. No pills were found.
Savana’s mother filed suit against Safford Unified School
District #1, Wilson, Romero, and Schwallier for conducting a
strip search in violation of Savana’s Fourth Amendment
rights. The individuals (hereinafter petitioners) moved for
summary judgment, raising a defense of qualified immunity.
The District Court for the District of Arizona granted the
motion on the ground that there was no Fourth Amendment
violation, and a panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed. 504
F. 3d 828 (2007).
A closely divided Circuit sitting en banc, however, re
versed. Following the two-step protocol for evaluating
claims of qualified immunity, see Saucier v. Katz, 533 U. S.
194, 200 (2001), the Ninth Circuit held that the strip search
was unjustified under the Fourth Amendment test for
searches of children by school officials set out in New Jersey
v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325 (1985). 531 F. 3d 1071, 1081–1087
(2008). The Circuit then applied the test for qualified immu
nity, and found that Savana’s right was clearly established at
the time of the search: “ ‘[t]hese notions of personal privacy
are “clearly established” in that they inhere in all of us, par
ticularly middle school teenagers, and are inherent in the
privacy component of the Fourth Amendment’s proscription
against unreasonable searches.’ ” Id., at 1088–1089 (quoting
Brannum v. Overton Cty. School Bd., 516 F. 3d 489, 499
(CA6 2008)). The upshot was reversal of summary judg
ment as to Wilson, while affirming the judgments in favor of
Schwallier, the school nurse, and Romero, the administrative

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assistant, since they had not acted as independent decision
makers. 531 F. 3d, at 1089.
We granted certiorari, 555 U. S. 1130 (2009), and now af
firm in part, reverse in part, and remand.
II
The Fourth Amendment “right of the people to be secure
in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches and sei
zures” generally requires a law enforcement officer to have
probable cause for conducting a search. “Probable cause ex
ists where ‘the facts and circumstances within [an officer’s]
knowledge and of which [he] had reasonably trustworthy in
formation [are] sufficient in themselves to warrant a man of
reasonable caution in the belief that’ an offense has been or
is being committed,” Brinegar v. United States, 338 U. S. 160,
175–176 (1949) (quoting Carroll v. United States, 267 U. S.
132, 162 (1925)), and that evidence bearing on that offense
will be found in the place to be searched.
In T. L. O., we recognized that the school setting “requires
some modification of the level of suspicion of illicit activity
needed to justify a search,” 469 U. S., at 340, and held that
for searches by school officials “a careful balancing of govern
mental and private interests suggests that the public in
terest is best served by a Fourth Amendment standard of
reasonableness that stops short of probable cause,” id., at
341. We have thus applied a standard of reasonable suspi
cion to determine the legality of a school administrator’s
search of a student, id., at 342, 345, and have held that a
school search “will be permissible in its scope when the
measures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of
the search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age
and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction,”
id., at 342.
A number of our cases on probable cause have an implicit
bearing on the reliable knowledge element of reasonable sus
picion, as we have attempted to flesh out the knowledge com

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ponent by looking to the degree to which known facts imply
prohibited conduct, see, e. g., Adams v. Williams, 407 U. S.
143, 148 (1972); id., at 160, n. 9 (Marshall, J., dissenting), the
specificity of the information received, see, e. g., Spinelli v.
United States, 393 U. S. 410, 416–417 (1969), and the reliabil
ity of its source, see, e. g., Aguilar v. Texas, 378 U. S. 108,
114 (1964). At the end of the day, however, we have realized
that these factors cannot rigidly control, Illinois v. Gates,
462 U. S. 213, 230 (1983), and we have come back to saying
that the standards are “fluid concepts that take their sub
stantive content from the particular contexts” in which they
are being assessed, Ornelas v. United States, 517 U. S. 690,
696 (1996).
Perhaps the best that can be said generally about the re
quired knowledge component of probable cause for a law en
forcement officer’s evidence search is that it raise a “fair
probability,” Gates, 462 U. S., at 238, or a “substantial
chance,” id., at 244, n. 13, of discovering evidence of criminal
activity. The lesser standard for school searches could as
readily be described as a moderate chance of finding evidence
of wrongdoing.
III
A
In this case, the school’s policies strictly prohibit the non
medical use, possession, or sale of any drug on school
grounds, including “ ‘[a]ny prescription or over-the-counter
drug, except those for which permission to use in school has
been granted pursuant to Board policy.’ ” App. to Pet. for
Cert. 128a.1 A week before Savana was searched, another
1 When the object of a school search is the enforcement of a school rule,
a valid search assumes, of course, the rule’s legitimacy. But the legiti
macy of the rule usually goes without saying as it does here. The Court
said plainly in New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325, 342, n. 9 (1985), that
standards of conduct for schools are for school administrators to determine
without second-guessing by courts lacking the experience to appreciate
what may be needed. Except in patently arbitrary instances, Fourth

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student, Jordan Romero (no relation of the school’s adminis
trative assistant), told the principal and Assistant Principal
Wilson that “certain students were bringing drugs and
weapons on campus,” and that he had been sick after taking
some pills that “he got from a classmate.” App. 8a. On the
morning of October 8, the same boy handed Wilson a white
pill that he said Marissa Glines had given him. He told Wil
son that students were planning to take the pills at lunch.
Wilson learned from Peggy Schwallier, the school nurse,
that the pill was ibuprofen 400 mg, available only by pre
scription. Wilson then called Marissa out of class. Outside
the classroom, Marissa’s teacher handed Wilson the day plan
ner, found within Marissa’s reach, containing various contra
band items. Wilson escorted Marissa back to his office.
In the presence of Helen Romero, Wilson requested Ma
rissa to turn out her pockets and open her wallet. Marissa
produced a blue pill, several white ones, and a razor blade.
Wilson asked where the blue pill came from, and Marissa
answered, “ ‘I guess it slipped in when she gave me the IBU
400s.’ ” Id., at 13a. When Wilson asked whom she meant,
Marissa replied, “ ‘Savana Redding.’ ” Ibid. Wilson then
enquired about the day planner and its contents; Marissa de
nied knowing anything about them. Wilson did not ask
Marissa any followup questions to determine whether there
was any likelihood that Savana presently had pills: neither
asking when Marissa received the pills from Savana nor
where Savana might be hiding them.
Amendment analysis takes the rule as a given, as it obviously should do
in this case. There is no need here either to explain the imperative of
keeping drugs out of schools, or to explain the reasons for the school’s rule
banning all drugs, no matter how benign, without advance permission.
Teachers are not pharmacologists trained to identify pills and powders,
and an effective drug ban has to be enforceable fast. The plenary ban
makes sense, and there is no basis to claim that the search was unreason
able owing to some defect or shortcoming of the rule it was aimed at
enforcing.

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Schwallier did not immediately recognize the blue pill, but
information provided through a poison control hotline 2 indi
cated that the pill was a 200-mg dose of an antiinflammatory
drug, generically called naproxen, available over the counter.
At Wilson’s direction, Marissa was then subjected to a search
of her bra and underpants by Romero and Schwallier, as Sa
vana was later on. The search revealed no additional pills.
It was at this juncture that Wilson called Savana into his
office and showed her the day planner. Their conversation
established that Savana and Marissa were on friendly terms:
while she denied knowledge of the contraband, Savana ad
mitted that the day planner was hers and that she had lent
it to Marissa. Wilson had other reports of their friendship
from staff members, who had identified Savana and Marissa
as part of an unusually rowdy group at the school’s opening
dance in August, during which alcohol and cigarettes were
found in the girls’ bathroom. Wilson had reason to connect
the girls with this contraband, for Wilson knew that Jordan
Romero had told the principal that before the dance, he had
been at a party at Savana’s house where alcohol was served.
Marissa’s statement that the pills came from Savana was
thus sufficiently plausible to warrant suspicion that Savana
was involved in pill distribution.
This suspicion of Wilson’s was enough to justify a search
of Savana’s backpack and outer clothing.3 If a student is
2 Poison control centers across the country maintain 24-hour help hot
lines to provide “immediate access to poison exposure management in
structions and information on potential poisons.” American Association
of Poison Control Centers, online at http://www.aapcc.org/dnn/About/
tabid/74/Default.aspx (all Internet materials as visited June 19, 2009, and
available in Clerk of Court’s case file).
3 There is no question here that justification for the school officials’
search was required in accordance with the T. L. O. standard of reasonable
suspicion, for it is common ground that Savana had a reasonable expecta
tion of privacy covering the personal things she chose to carry in her
backpack, cf. 469 U. S., at 339, and that Wilson’s decision to look through
it was a “search” within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.

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reasonably suspected of giving out contraband pills, she is
reasonably suspected of carrying them on her person and in
the carryall that has become an item of student uniform in
most places today. If Wilson’s reasonable suspicion of pill
distribution were not understood to support searches of
outer clothes and backpack, it would not justify any search
worth making. And the look into Savana’s bag, in her pres
ence and in the relative privacy of Wilson’s office, was not
excessively intrusive, any more than Romero’s subsequent
search of her outer clothing.
B
Here it is that the parties part company, with Savana’s
claim that extending the search at Wilson’s behest to the
point of making her pull out her underwear was constitution
ally unreasonable. The exact label for this final step in the
intrusion is not important, though strip search is a fair way
to speak of it. Romero and Schwallier directed Savana to
remove her clothes down to her underwear, and then “pull
out” her bra and the elastic band on her underpants. Id., at
23a. Although Romero and Schwallier stated that they did
not see anything when Savana followed their instructions,
App. to Pet. for Cert. 135a, we would not define strip search
and its Fourth Amendment consequences in a way that
would guarantee litigation about who was looking and how
much was seen. The very fact of Savana’s pulling her un
derwear away from her body in the presence of the two offi
cials who were able to see her necessarily exposed her
breasts and pelvic area to some degree, and both subjective
and reasonable societal expectations of personal privacy sup
port the treatment of such a search as categorically distinct,
requiring distinct elements of justification on the part of
school authorities for going beyond a search of outer clothing
and belongings.
Savana’s subjective expectation of privacy against such a
search is inherent in her account of it as embarrassing,

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frightening, and humiliating. The reasonableness of her ex
pectation (required by the Fourth Amendment standard) is
indicated by the consistent experiences of other young peo
ple similarly searched, whose adolescent vulnerability inten
sifies the patent intrusiveness of the exposure. See Brief
for National Association of Social Workers et al. as Amici
Curiae 6–14; Hyman & Perone, The Other Side of School
Violence: Educator Policies and Practices that may Contrib
ute to Student Misbehavior, 36 J. School Psychology 7, 13
(1998) (strip search can “result in serious emotional dam
age”). The common reaction of these adolescents simply
registers the obviously different meaning of a search expos
ing the body from the experience of nakedness or near un
dress in other school circumstances. Changing for gym is
getting ready for play; exposing for a search is responding to
an accusation reserved for suspected wrongdoers and fairly
understood as so degrading that a number of communities
have decided that strip searches in schools are never reason
able and have banned them no matter what the facts may
be, see, e. g., New York City Dept. of Education, Reg.
No. A–432, p. 2 (2005), online at http://docs.nycenet.edu/docu
share/dsweb/Get/Document-21/A-432.pdf (“Under no circum
stances shall a strip-search of a student be conducted”).
The indignity of the search does not, of course, outlaw it,
but it does implicate the rule of reasonableness as stated in
T. L. O., that “the search as actually conducted [be] reason
ably related in scope to the circumstances which justified the
interference in the first place.” 469 U. S., at 341 (internal
quotation marks omitted). The scope will be permissible,
that is, when it is “not excessively intrusive in light of the
age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.”
Id., at 342.
Here, the content of the suspicion failed to match the de
gree of intrusion. Wilson knew beforehand that the pills
were prescription-strength ibuprofen and over-the-counter
naproxen, common pain relievers equivalent to two Advil, or

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one Aleve.4 He must have been aware of the nature and
limited threat of the specific drugs he was searching for, and
while just about anything can be taken in quantities that will
do real harm, Wilson had no reason to suspect that large
amounts of the drugs were being passed around, or that indi
vidual students were receiving great numbers of pills.
Nor could Wilson have suspected that Savana was hiding
common painkillers in her underwear. Petitioners suggest,
as a truth universally acknowledged, that “students . . . hid[e]
contraband in or under their clothing,” Reply Brief for Peti
tioners 8, and cite a smattering of cases of students with
contraband in their underwear, id., at 8–9. But when the
categorically extreme intrusiveness of a search down to the
body of an adolescent requires some justification in sus
pected facts, general background possibilities fall short; a
reasonable search that extensive calls for suspicion that it
will pay off. But nondangerous school contraband does not
raise the specter of stashes in intimate places, and there is no
evidence in the record of any general practice among Safford
Middle School students of hiding that sort of thing in under
wear; neither Jordan nor Marissa suggested to Wilson that
Savana was doing that, and the preceding search of Marissa
that Wilson ordered yielded nothing. Wilson never even de
termined when Marissa had received the pills from Savana;
if it had been a few days before, that would weigh heavily
against any reasonable conclusion that Savana presently had
the pills on her person, much less in her underwear.
In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that
pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the stu
dents from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and
any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her
4 An Advil tablet, caplet, or gel caplet contains 200 mg ibuprofen. See
2007 Physicians’ Desk Reference for Nonprescription Drugs, Dietary Sup
plements, and Herbs 674 (28th ed. 2006). An Aleve caplet contains 200
mg naproxen and 20 mg sodium. See id., at 675.

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underwear. We think that the combination of these defi
ciencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.
In so holding, we mean to cast no ill reflection on the
assistant principal, for the record raises no doubt that his
motive throughout was to eliminate drugs from his school
and protect students from what Jordan Romero had gone
through. Parents are known to overreact to protect their
children from danger, and a school official with responsibility
for safety may tend to do the same. The difference is that
the Fourth Amendment places limits on the official, even
with the high degree of deference that courts must pay to
the educator’s professional judgment.
We do mean, though, to make it clear that the T. L. O. con
cern to limit a school search to reasonable scope requires
the support of reasonable suspicion of danger or of resort to
underwear for hiding evidence of wrongdoing before a search
can reasonably make the quantum leap from outer clothes
and backpacks to exposure of intimate parts. The meaning
of such a search, and the degradation its subject may reason
ably feel, place a search that intrusive in a category of its
own demanding its own specific suspicions.
IV
A school official searching a student is “entitled to qualified
immunity where clearly established law does not show that
the search violated the Fourth Amendment.” Pearson v.
Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 243–244 (2009). To be established
clearly, however, there is no need that “the very action in
question [have] previously been held unlawful.” Wilson v.
Layne, 526 U. S. 603, 615 (1999). The unconstitutionality of
outrageous conduct obviously will be unconstitutional, this
being the reason, as Judge Posner has said, that “[t]he easiest
cases don’t even arise.” K. H. v. Morgan, 914 F. 2d 846,
851 (CA7 1990). But even as to action less than an outrage,
“officials can still be on notice that their conduct violates es

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tablished law . . . in novel factual circumstances.” Hope v.
Pelzer, 536 U. S. 730, 741 (2002).
T. L. O. directed school officials to limit the intrusiveness
of a search, “in light of the age and sex of the student and
the nature of the infraction,” 469 U. S., at 342, and as we
have just said at some length, the intrusiveness of the strip
search here cannot be seen as justifiably related to the cir
cumstances. But we realize that the lower courts have
reached divergent conclusions regarding how the T. L. O.
standard applies to such searches.
A number of judges have read T. L. O. as the en banc mi
nority of the Ninth Circuit did here. The Sixth Circuit up
held a strip search of a high school student for a drug, with
out any suspicion that drugs were hidden next to her body.
Williams v. Ellington, 936 F. 2d 881, 882–883, 887 (1991).
And other courts considering qualified immunity for strip
searches have read T. L. O. as “a series of abstractions, on
the one hand, and a declaration of seeming deference to the
judgments of school officials, on the other,” Jenkins v. Talla
dega City Bd. of Ed., 115 F. 3d 821, 828 (CA11 1997) (en
banc), which made it impossible “to establish clearly the con
tours of a Fourth Amendment right . . . [in] the wide variety
of possible school settings different from those involved in
T. L. O.” itself, ibid. See also Thomas v. Roberts, 323 F. 3d
950 (CA11 2003) (granting qualified immunity to a teacher
and police officer who conducted a group strip search of a
fifth grade class when looking for a missing $26).
We think these differences of opinion from our own are
substantial enough to require immunity for the school offi
cials in this case. We would not suggest that entitlement to
qualified immunity is the guaranteed product of disuniform
views of the law in the other federal, or state, courts, and
the fact that a single judge, or even a group of judges, dis
agrees about the contours of a right does not automatically
render the law unclear if we have been clear. That said,
however, the cases viewing school strip searches differently

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from the way we see them are numerous enough, with well
reasoned majority and dissenting opinions, to counsel doubt
that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law.
We conclude that qualified immunity is warranted.
V
The strip search of Savana Redding was unreasonable and
a violation of the Fourth Amendment, but petitioners Wilson,
Romero, and Schwallier are nevertheless protected from lia
bility through qualified immunity. Our conclusions here do
not resolve, however, the question of the liability of peti
tioner Safford Unified School District #1 under Monell v.
New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U. S. 658, 694
(1978), a claim the Ninth Circuit did not address. The judg
ment of the Ninth Circuit is therefore affirmed in part and
reversed in part, and this case is remanded for consideration
of the Monell claim.
It is so ordered.
Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsburg joins,
concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325 (1985), the Court
established a two-step inquiry for determining the reason
ableness of a school official’s decision to search a student.
First, the Court explained, the search must be “ ‘justified at
its inception’ ” by the presence of “reasonable grounds for
suspecting that the search will turn up evidence that the
student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules
of the school.” Id., at 342. Second, the search must be
“permissible in its scope,” which is achieved “when the meas
ures adopted are reasonably related to the objectives of the
search and not excessively intrusive in light of the age and
sex of the student and the nature of the infraction.” Ibid.
(emphasis added).
Nothing the Court decides today alters this basic frame
work. It simply applies T. L. O. to declare unconstitutional

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a strip search of a 13-year-old honors student that was based
on a groundless suspicion that she might be hiding medicine
in her underwear. This is, in essence, a case in which
clearly established law meets clearly outrageous conduct.
I have long believed that “ ‘[i]t does not require a constitu
tional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old
child is an invasion of constitutional rights of some magni
tude.’ ” Id., at 382, n. 25 (opinion concurring in part and
dissenting in part) (quoting Doe v. Renfrow, 631 F. 2d 91,
92–93 (CA7 1980)). The strip search of Savana Redding in
this case was both more intrusive and less justified than the
search of the student’s purse in T. L. O. Therefore, while I
join Parts I–III of the Court’s opinion, I disagree with its
decision to extend qualified immunity to the school official
who authorized this unconstitutional search.
The Court reaches a contrary conclusion about qualified
immunity based on the fact that various Courts of Appeals
have adopted seemingly divergent views about T. L. O.’s ap
plication to strip searches. Ante, at 377–378. But the clar
ity of a well-established right should not depend on whether
jurists have misread our precedents. And while our cases
have previously noted the “divergence of views” among
courts in deciding whether to extend qualified immunity,
e. g., Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U. S. 223, 245 (2009) (noting
the unsettled constitutionality of the so-called “consent
once-removed” doctrine); Wilson v. Layne, 526 U. S. 603, 618
(1999) (considering conflicting views on the constitutionality
of law enforcement’s practice of allowing the media to enter
a private home to observe and film attempted arrests), we
have relied on that consideration only to spare officials from
having “ ‘to predict the future course of constitutional law,’ ”
id., at 617 (quoting Procunier v. Navarette, 434 U. S. 555, 562
(1978); emphasis added). In this case, by contrast, we chart
no new constitutional path. We merely decide whether the
decision to strip search Savana Redding, on these facts, was

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prohibited under T. L. O. Our conclusion leaves the bound
aries of the law undisturbed.*
The Court of Appeals properly rejected the school official’s
qualified immunity defense, and I would affirm that court’s
judgment in its entirety.
Justice Ginsburg, concurring in part and dissenting in
part.
I agree with the Court that Assistant Principal Wilson’s
subjection of 13-year-old Savana Redding to a humiliating
stripdown search violated the Fourth Amendment. But I
also agree with Justice Stevens, ante, at 379–380 and this
page (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part), that
our opinion in New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325 (1985),
“clearly established” the law governing this case.
Fellow student Marissa Glines, caught with pills in her
pocket, accused Redding of supplying them. App. 13a.
Asked where the blue pill among several white pills in
Glines’s pocket came from, Glines answered: “I guess it
slipped in when she gave me the IBU 400s.” Ibid. Asked
next “who is she?”, Glines responded: “Savana Redding.”
Ibid. As the Court observes, ante, at 372, 376, no followup
questions were asked. Wilson did not test Glines’s accusa
tion for veracity by asking Glines when did Redding give her
the pills, where, for what purpose. Any reasonable search
for the pills would have ended when inspection of Redding’s
backpack and jacket pockets yielded nothing. Wilson had
no cause to suspect, based on prior experience at the school
or clues in this case, that Redding had hidden pills—contain
ing the equivalent of two Advils or one Aleve—in her under
wear or body. To make matters worse, Wilson did not re
lease Redding, to return to class or to go home, after the
*In fact, in T. L. O. we cited with approval a Ninth Circuit case, Bilbrey
v. Brown, 738 F. 2d 1462 (1984), which held that a strip search performed
under similar circumstances violated the Constitution. 469 U. S., at 332,
n. 2; id., at 341, and n. 6 (adopting Bilbrey’s reasonable suspicion standard).

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search. Instead, he made her sit on a chair outside his office
for over two hours. At no point did he attempt to call her
parent. Abuse of authority of that order should not be
shielded by official immunity.
In contrast to T. L. O., where a teacher discovered a stu
dent smoking in the lavatory, and where the search was con
fined to the student’s purse, the search of Redding involved
her body and rested on the bare accusation of another stu
dent whose reliability the Assistant Principal had no reason
to trust. The Court’s opinion in T. L. O. plainly stated the
controlling Fourth Amendment law: A search ordered by a
school official, even if “justified at its inception,” crosses the
constitutional boundary if it becomes “excessively intrusive
in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of
the infraction.” 469 U. S., at 342 (internal quotation marks
omitted).
Here, “the nature of the [supposed] infraction,” the slim
basis for suspecting Savana Redding, and her “age and sex,”
ibid., establish beyond doubt that Assistant Principal Wil
son’s order cannot be reconciled with this Court’s opinion in
T. L. O. Wilson’s treatment of Redding was abusive, and it
was not reasonable for him to believe that the law permitted
it. I join Justice Stevens in dissenting from the Court’s
acceptance of Wilson’s qualified immunity plea, and would
affirm the Court of Appeals’ judgment in all respects.
Justice Thomas, concurring in the judgment in part and
dissenting in part.
I agree with the Court that the judgment against the
school officials with respect to qualified immunity should be
reversed. See ante, at 377–379. Unlike the majority, how
ever, I would hold that the search of Savana Redding did
not violate the Fourth Amendment. The majority imposes
a vague and amorphous standard on school administrators.
It also grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the
measures that these officials take to maintain discipline in

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their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students
in their charge. This deep intrusion into the administration
of public schools exemplifies why the Court should return to
the common-law doctrine of in loco parentis under which
“the judiciary was reluctant to interfere in the routine busi
ness of school administration, allowing schools and teachers
to set and enforce rules and to maintain order.” Morse v.
Frederick, 551 U. S. 393, 414 (2007) (Thomas, J., concurring).
But even under the prevailing Fourth Amendment test es
tablished by New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S. 325 (1985), all
petitioners, including the school district, are entitled to judg
ment as a matter of law in their favor.
I
“Although the underlying command of the Fourth Amend
ment is always that searches and seizures be reasonable,
what is reasonable depends on the context within which a
search takes place.” Id., at 337. Thus, although public
school students retain Fourth Amendment rights under this
Court’s precedent, see id., at 333–337, those rights “are
different . . . than elsewhere; the ‘reasonableness’ inquiry
cannot disregard the schools’ custodial and tutelary responsi
bility for children,” Vernonia School Dist. 47J v. Acton, 515
U. S. 646, 656 (1995); see also T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 339 (identi
fying “the substantial interest of teachers and administra
tors in maintaining discipline in the classroom and on school
grounds”). For nearly 25 years this Court has understood
that “[m]aintaining order in the classroom has never been
easy, but in recent years, school disorder has often taken
particularly ugly forms: drug use and violent crime in the
schools have become major social problems.” Ibid. In
schools, “[e]vents calling for discipline are frequent occur
rences and sometimes require immediate, effective action.”
Goss v. Lopez, 419 U. S. 565, 580 (1975); see also T. L. O., 469
U. S., at 340 (explaining that schools have a “legitimate need

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to maintain an environment in which learning can take
place”).
For this reason, school officials retain broad authority to
protect students and preserve “order and a proper educa
tional environment” under the Fourth Amendment. Id., at
339. This authority requires that school officials be able to
engage in the “close supervision of schoolchildren, as well as
. . . enforc[e] rules against conduct that would be perfectly
permissible if undertaken by an adult.” Ibid. Seeking to
reconcile the Fourth Amendment with this unique public
school setting, the Court in T. L. O. held that a school search
is “reasonable” if it is “ ‘justified at its inception’ ” and “ ‘rea
sonably related in scope to the circumstances which justified
the interference in the first place.’ ” Id., at 341–342 (quoting
Terry v. Ohio, 392 U. S. 1, 20 (1968)). The search under re
view easily meets this standard.
A
A “search of a student by a teacher or other school official
will be ‘justified at its inception’ when there are reasonable
grounds for suspecting that the search will turn up evidence
that the student has violated or is violating either the law or
the rules of the school.” T. L. O., supra, at 341–342 (footnote
omitted). As the majority rightly concedes, this search was
justified at its inception because there were reasonable
grounds to suspect that Redding possessed medication that
violated school rules. See ante, at 373. A finding of rea
sonable suspicion “does not deal with hard certainties, but
with probabilities.” United States v. Cortez, 449 U. S. 411,
418 (1981); see also T. L. O., supra, at 346 (“[T]he require
ment of reasonable suspicion is not a requirement of absolute
certainty”). To satisfy this standard, more than a mere
“hunch” of wrongdoing is required, but “considerably” less
suspicion is needed than would be required to “satisf[y] a
preponderance of the evidence standard.” United States v.

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Arvizu, 534 U. S. 266, 274 (2002) (internal quotation marks
omitted).
Furthermore, in evaluating whether there is a reasonable
“particularized and objective” basis for conducting a search
based on suspected wrongdoing, government officials must
consider the “totality of the circumstances.” Id., at 273 (in
ternal quotation marks omitted). School officials have a spe
cialized understanding of the school environment, the habits
of the students, and the concerns of the community, which
enables them to “ ‘formulat[e] certain common-sense conclu
sions about human behavior.’ ” United States v. Sokolow,
490 U. S. 1, 8 (1989) (quoting Cortez, supra, at 418). And
like police officers, school officials are “entitled to make an
assessment of the situation in light of [this] specialized train
ing and familiarity with the customs of the [school].” See
Arvizu, supra, at 276.
Here, petitioners had reasonable grounds to suspect that
Redding was in possession of prescription and nonprescrip
tion drugs in violation of the school’s prohibition of the “non
medical use, possession, or sale of a drug” on school property
or at school events. 531 F. 3d 1071, 1076 (CA9 2008) (en
banc); see also id., at 1107 (Hawkins, J., dissenting) (explain
ing that the school policy defined “drugs” to include “ ‘[a]ny
prescription or over-the-counter drug, except those for
which permission to use in school has been granted’ ”). As
an initial matter, school officials were aware that a few years
earlier, a student had become “seriously ill” and “spent
several days in intensive care” after ingesting prescription
medication obtained from a classmate. App. 10a. Fourth
Amendment searches do not occur in a vacuum; rather, con
text must inform the judicial inquiry. See Cortez, supra, at
417–418. In this instance, the suspicion of drug possession
arose at a middle school that had “a history of problems with
students using and distributing prohibited and illegal sub
stances on campus.” App. 7a, 10a.

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The school’s substance-abuse problems had not abated by
the 2003–2004 school year, which is when the challenged
search of Redding took place. School officials had found al
cohol and cigarettes in the girls’ bathroom during the first
school dance of the year and noticed that a group of students
including Redding and Marissa Glines smelled of alcohol.
Ibid. Several weeks later, another student, Jordan Romero,
reported that Redding had hosted a party before the dance
where she served whiskey, vodka, and tequila. Id., at 8a,
11a. Romero had provided this report to school officials as
a result of a meeting his mother scheduled with the officials
after Romero “bec[a]me violent” and “sick to his stomach”
one night and admitted that “he had taken some pills that he
had got[ten] from a classmate.” Id., at 7a–8a, 10a–11a. At
that meeting, Romero admitted that “certain students were
bringing drugs and weapons on campus.” Id., at 8a, 11a.
One week later, Romero handed the assistant principal a
white pill that he said he had received from Glines. Id., at
11a. He reported “that a group of students [were] planning
on taking the pills at lunch.” Ibid.
School officials justifiably took quick action in light of the
lunchtime deadline. The assistant principal took the pill to
the school nurse who identified it as prescription-strength
400-mg ibuprofen. Id., at 12a. A subsequent search of
Glines and her belongings produced a razor blade, a na
proxen 200-mg pill, and several ibuprofen 400-mg pills. Id.,
at 13a. When asked, Glines claimed that she had received
the pills from Redding. Ibid. A search of Redding’s plan
ner, which Glines had borrowed, then uncovered “several
knives, several lighters, a cigarette, and a permanent
marker.” Id., at 12a, 14a, 22a. Thus, as the majority ac
knowledges, ante, at 373–374, the totality of relevant circum
stances justified a search of Redding for pills.1
1 To be sure, Redding denied knowledge of the pills and the materials in
her planner. App. 14a. But her denial alone does not negate the reason

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B
The remaining question is whether the search was reason
able in scope. Under T. L. O., “a search will be permissible
in its scope when the measures adopted are reasonably re
lated to the objectives of the search and not excessively
intrusive in light of the age and sex of the student and the
nature of the infraction.” 469 U. S., at 342. The major
ity concludes that the school officials’ search of Redding’s
underwear was not “ ‘reasonably related in scope to the
circumstances which justified the interference in the first
place,’ ” see ante, at 374–377, notwithstanding the officials’
reasonable suspicion that Redding “was involved in pill dis
tribution,” ante, at 373. According to the majority, to be
reasonable, this school search required a showing of “danger
to the students from the power of the drugs or their quan
tity” or a “reason to suppose that [Redding] was carrying
pills in her underwear.” Ante, at 376–377. Each of these
additional requirements is an unjustifiable departure from
bedrock Fourth Amendment law in the school setting, where
this Court has heretofore read the Fourth Amendment to
grant considerable leeway to school officials. Because the
school officials searched in a location where the pills could
have been hidden, the search was reasonable in scope
under T. L. O.
1
The majority finds that “subjective and reasonable societal
expectations of personal privacy support . . . treat[ing]” this
type of search, which it labels a “strip search,” as “categori
cally distinct, requiring distinct elements of justification on
the part of school authorities for going beyond a search of
able suspicion held by school officials. See New Jersey v. T. L. O., 469 U. S.
325, 345 (1985) (finding search reasonable even though “T. L. O. had been
accused of smoking, and had denied the accusation in the strongest possi
ble terms when she stated that she did not smoke at all”).

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outer clothing and belongings.” Ante, at 374.2 Thus, in the
majority’s view, although the school officials had reasonable
suspicion to believe that Redding had the pills on her person,
see ante, at 373–374, they needed some greater level of par
ticularized suspicion to conduct this “strip search.” There
is no support for this contortion of the Fourth Amendment.
The Court has generally held that the reasonableness of a
search’s scope depends only on whether it is limited to the
area that is capable of concealing the object of the search.
See, e. g., Wyoming v. Houghton, 526 U. S. 295, 307 (1999)
(Police officers “may inspect passengers’ belongings found in
the car that are capable of concealing the object of the
search”); Florida v. Jimeno, 500 U. S. 248, 251 (1991) (“The
scope of a search is generally defined by its expressed ob
ject”); United States v. Johns, 469 U. S. 478, 487 (1985)
(search reasonable because “there is no plausible argument
that the object of the search could not have been concealed
in the packages”); United States v. Ross, 456 U. S. 798, 820
(1982) (“A lawful search . . . generally extends to the entire
area in which the object of the search may be found”).3
In keeping with this longstanding rule, the “nature of the
infraction” referenced in T. L. O. delineates the proper scope
of a search of students in a way that is identical to that per
2 Like the dissent below, “I would reserve the term ‘strip search’ for a
search that required its subject to fully disrobe in view of officials.” 531
F. 3d 1071, 1091, n. 1 (CA9 2008) (opinion of Hawkins, J.). The distinction
between a strip search and the search at issue in this case may be slight,
but it is a distinction that the law has drawn. See, e. g., Sandin v. Conner,
515 U. S. 472, 475 (1995) (“The officer subjected Conner to a strip search,
complete with an inspection of the rectal area”); Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U. S.
520, 558, and n. 39 (1979) (describing visual inspection of body cavities as
“part of a strip search”).
3 The Court has adopted a different standard for searches involving an
“intrusio[n] into the human body.” Schmerber v. California, 384 U. S.
757, 770 (1966). The search here does not implicate the Court’s cases
governing bodily intrusions, however, because it did not involve a “physi
cal intrusion, penetrating beneath the skin,” Skinner v. Railway Labor
Executives’ Assn., 489 U. S. 602, 616 (1989).

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mitted for searches outside the school—i. e., the search must
be limited to the areas where the object of that infraction
could be concealed. See Horton v. California, 496 U. S. 128,
141 (1990) (“Police with a warrant for a rifle may search only
places where rifles might be” (internal quotation marks omit
ted)); Ross, supra, at 824 (“[P]robable cause to believe that
undocumented aliens are being transported in a van will not
justify a warrantless search of a suitcase”). A search of a
student therefore is permissible in scope under T. L. O. so
long as it is objectively reasonable to believe that the area
searched could conceal the contraband. The dissenting
opinion below correctly captured this Fourth Amendment
standard, noting that “if a student were rumored to have
brought a baseball bat on campus in violation of school policy,
a search of that student’s shirt pocket would be patently un
justified.” 531 F. 3d, at 1104 (opinion of Hawkins, J.).
The analysis of whether the scope of the search here was
permissible under that standard is straightforward. In
deed, the majority does not dispute that “general back
ground possibilities” establish that students conceal “contra
band in their underwear.” Ante, at 376. It acknowledges
that school officials had reasonable suspicion to look in Red
ding’s backpack and outer clothing because if “Wilson’s rea
sonable suspicion of pill distribution were not understood to
support searches of outer clothes and backpack, it would not
justify any search worth making.” Ante, at 374. The ma
jority nevertheless concludes that proceeding any further
with the search was unreasonable. See ante, at 374–377; see
also ante, at 381 (Ginsburg, J., concurring in part and dis
senting in part) (“Any reasonable search for the pills would
have ended when inspection of Redding’s backpack and
jacket pockets yielded nothing”). But there is no support
for this conclusion. The reasonable suspicion that Redding
possessed the pills for distribution purposes did not dissipate
simply because the search of her backpack turned up noth
ing. It was eminently reasonable to conclude that the back

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pack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in
a place she thought no one would look. See Ross, supra, at
820 (“Contraband goods rarely are strewn” about in plain
view; “by their very nature such goods must be withheld
from public view”).
Redding would not have been the first person to conceal
pills in her undergarments. See Hicks, Man Gets 17-Year
Drug Sentence, Times-Tribune (Corbin, Ky.), Oct. 7, 2008,
pp. 1, 5 (Drug courier “told officials she had the [OxyContin]
pills concealed in her crotch”); Conley, Whitehaven: Traffic
Stop Yields Hydrocodone Pills, Commercial Appeal (Mem
phis, Tenn.), Aug. 3, 2007, p. B3 (“An additional 40 hydroco
done pills were found in her pants”); Caywood, Police Vehicle
Chase Leads to Drug Arrests, Telegram & Gazette (Worces
ter, Mass.), June 7, 2008, p. A7 (25-year-old “allegedly had a
cigar tube stuffed with pills tucked into the waistband of his
pants”); Hubartt, 23-Year-Old Charged With Dealing Ec
stasy, Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Ind.), Aug. 8, 2007, p. 2C
(“[W]hile he was being put into a squad car, his pants fell
down and a plastic bag containing pink and orange pills fell
on the ground”); Sebastian Residents Arrested in Drug
Sting, Vero Beach Press Journal, Sept. 16, 2006, p. B2 (Ar
restee “told them he had more pills ‘down my pants’ ”). Nor
will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces
the safest place to secrete contraband in school.
2
The majority compounds its error by reading the “nature
of the infraction” aspect of the T. L. O. test as a license to
limit searches based on a judge’s assessment of a particular
school policy. According to the majority, the scope of the
search was impermissible because the school official “must
have been aware of the nature and limited threat of the spe
cific drugs he was searching for” and because he “had no
reason to suspect that large amounts of the drugs were being
passed around, or that individual students were receiving

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great numbers of pills.” Ante, at 376. Thus, in order to
locate a rationale for finding a Fourth Amendment violation
in this case, the majority retreats from its observation that
the school’s firm no-drug policy “makes sense, and there is
no basis to claim that the search was unreasonable owing
to some defect or shortcoming of the rule it was aimed at
enforcing.” Ante, at 372, n. 1.
Even accepting the majority’s assurances that it is not at
tacking the rule’s reasonableness, it certainly is attacking
the rule’s importance. This approach directly conflicts with
T. L. O. in which the Court was “unwilling to adopt a stand
ard under which the legality of a search is dependent upon a
judge’s evaluation of the relative importance of various
school rules.” 469 U. S., at 342, n. 9. Indeed, the Court in
T. L. O. expressly rejected the proposition that the majority
seemingly endorses—that “some rules regarding student
conduct are by nature too ‘trivial’ to justify a search based
upon reasonable suspicion.” Ibid.; see also id., at 343, n. 9
(“The promulgation of a rule forbidding specified conduct
presumably reflects a judgment on the part of school officials
that such conduct is destructive of school order or of a proper
educational environment. Absent any suggestion that the
rule violates some substantive constitutional guarantee, the
courts should, as a general matter, defer to that judgment”).
The majority’s decision in this regard also departs from
another basic principle of the Fourth Amendment: that law
enforcement officials can enforce with the same vigor all
rules and regulations irrespective of the perceived impor
tance of any of those rules. “In a long line of cases, we have
said that when an officer has probable cause to believe a per
son committed even a minor crime in his presence, the bal
ancing of private and public interests is not in doubt. The
arrest is constitutionally reasonable.” Virginia v. Moore,
553 U. S. 164, 171 (2008). The Fourth Amendment rule for
searches is the same: Police officers are entitled to search
regardless of the perceived triviality of the underlying law.

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As we have explained, requiring police to make “sensitive,
case-by-case determinations of government need,” Atwater
v. Lago Vista, 532 U. S. 318, 347 (2001), for a particular prohi
bition before conducting a search would “place police in an
almost impossible spot,” id., at 350.
The majority has placed school officials in this “impossible
spot” by questioning whether possession of ibuprofen and
naproxen causes a severe enough threat to warrant investi
gation. Had the suspected infraction involved a street drug,
the majority implies that it would have approved the scope
of the search. See ante, at 376 (relying on the “limited
threat of the specific drugs he was searching for”); ibid. (re
lying on the limited “power of the drugs” involved). In ef
fect, then, the majority has replaced a school rule that draws
no distinction among drugs with a new one that does. As a
result, a full search of a student’s person for prohibited drugs
will be permitted only if the Court agrees that the drug in
question was sufficiently dangerous. Such a test is unwork
able and unsound. School officials cannot be expected to
halt searches based on the possibility that a court might later
find that the particular infraction at issue is not severe
enough to warrant an intrusive investigation.4
4 Justice Ginsburg suggests that requiring Redding to “sit on a chair
outside [the assistant principal’s] office for over two hours” and failing to
call her parents before conducting the search constitutes an “[a]buse of
authority” that “should not be shielded by official immunity.” See ante,
at 382. But the school was under no constitutional obligation to call
Redding’s parents before conducting the search: “[R]easonableness under
the Fourth Amendment does not require employing the least intrusive
means, because the logic of such elaborate less-restrictive-alternative ar
guments could raise insuperable barriers to the exercise of virtually all
search-and-seizure powers.” Board of Ed. of Independent School Dist.
No. 92 of Pottawatomie Cty. v. Earls, 536 U. S. 822, 837 (2002) (internal
quotation marks and brackets omitted). For the same reason, the Consti
tution did not require school officials to ask “followup questions” after they
had already developed reasonable suspicion that Redding possessed drugs.
See ante, at 372, 376 (majority opinion); ante, at 381 (opinion of Ginsburg,
J.). In any event, the suggestion that requiring Redding to sit in a chair

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A rule promulgated by a school board represents the judg
ment of school officials that the rule is needed to maintain
“school order” and “a proper educational environment.”
T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 343, n. 9. Teachers, administrators, and
the local school board are called upon both to “protect the . . .
safety of students and school personnel” and “maintain an
environment conducive to learning.” Id., at 353 (Blackmun,
J., concurring in judgment). They are tasked with “watch
[ing] over a large number of students” who “are inclined to
test the outer boundaries of acceptable conduct and to imi
tate the misbehavior of a peer if that misbehavior is not dealt
with quickly.” Id., at 352. In such an environment, some
thing as simple as a “water pistol or peashooter can wreak
[havoc] until it is taken away.” Ibid. The danger posed by
unchecked distribution and consumption of prescription pills
by students certainly needs no elaboration.
Judges are not qualified to second-guess the best manner
for maintaining quiet and order in the school environment.
Such institutional judgments, like those concerning the selec
tion of the best methods for “restrain[ing students] from as
saulting one another, abusing drugs and alcohol, and commit
ting other crimes,” id., at 342, n. 9, “involve a host of policy
choices that must be made by locally elected representatives,
rather than by federal judges interpreting the basic charter
of Government for the entire country,” Collins v. Harker
Heights, 503 U. S. 115, 129 (1992); cf. Regents of Univ. of
Mich. v. Ewing, 474 U. S. 214, 226 (1985) (observing that fed
eral courts are not “suited to evaluat[ing] the substance of
the multitude of academic decisions” or disciplinary decisions
“that are made daily by faculty members of public educa
for two hours amounted to a deprivation of her constitutional rights, or
that school officials are required to engage in detailed interrogations be
fore conducting searches for drugs, only reinforces the conclusion that the
Judiciary is ill equipped to second-guess the daily decisions made by pub
lic administrators. Cf. Beard v. Banks, 548 U. S. 521, 536–537 (2006)
(Thomas, J., concurring in judgment).

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tional institutions”). It is a mistake for judges to assume
the responsibility for deciding which school rules are impor
tant enough to allow for invasive searches and which rules
are not.
3
Even if this Court were authorized to second-guess the
importance of school rules, the Court’s assessment of the
importance of this district’s policy is flawed. It is a crime
to possess or use prescription-strength ibuprofen without
a prescription. See Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13–3406(A)(1)
(West Supp. 2008) (“A person shall not knowingly . . . [p]os
sess or use a prescription-only drug unless the person ob
tains the prescription-only drug pursuant to a valid prescrip
tion of a prescriber who is licensed pursuant to [state law]”).5
By prohibiting unauthorized prescription drugs on school
grounds—and conducting a search to ensure students abide
by that prohibition—the school rule here was consistent with
a routine provision of the state criminal code. It hardly
seems unreasonable for school officials to enforce a rule that,
in effect, proscribes conduct that amounts to a crime.
Moreover, school districts have valid reasons for punishing
the unauthorized possession of prescription drugs on school
5 Arizona’s law is not idiosyncratic; many States have separately crimi
nalized the unauthorized possession of prescription drugs. See, e. g., Mo.
Rev. Stat. § 577.628(1) (2008 Cum. Supp.) (“No person less than twenty-one
years of age shall possess upon the real property comprising a public or
private elementary or secondary school or school bus prescription medica
tion without a valid prescription for such medication”); Okla. Stat., Tit. 59,
§ 353.24(2) (West 2008 Supp.) (“It shall be unlawful for any person, firm or
corporation to . . . [s]ell, offer for sale, barter or give away any unused
quantity of drugs obtained by prescription, except . . . as otherwise pro
vided by the [State] Board of Pharmacy”); Utah Code Ann. § 58–17b–
501(12) (Lexis 2007) (“ ‘Unlawful conduct’ includes: . . . using a prescription
drug . . . for himself that was not lawfully prescribed for him by a prac
titioner”); see also Ala. Code § 34–23–7 (2002); Del. Code Ann., Tit. 16,
§ 4754A(a)(4) (2003); Fla. Stat. § 499.005(14) (2007); N. H. Rev. Stat. Ann.
§ 318:42(I) (West Supp. 2008).

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property as severely as the possession of street drugs;
“[t]eenage abuse of over-the-counter and prescription drugs
poses an increasingly alarming national crisis.” Get Teens
Off Drugs, 72 The Education Digest, No. 4, p. 75 (Dec. 2006).
As one study noted, “more young people ages 12–17 abuse
prescription drugs than any illicit drug except marijuana—
more than cocaine, heroin, and methamphetamine com
bined.” Executive Office of the President, Office of National
Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), Prescription for Danger 1
(Jan. 2008) (hereinafter Prescription for Danger). And ac
cording to a 2005 survey of teens, “nearly one in five (19
percent or 4.5 million) admit abusing prescription drugs in
their lifetime.” Columbia University, The National Center
on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA), “You’ve Got
Drugs!” V: Prescription Drug Pushers on the Internet 2
(July 2008); see also Dept. of Health and Human Services,
National Institute on Drug Abuse, High School and Youth
Trends 2 (Dec. 2008) (“In 2008, 15.4 percent of 12th-graders
reported using a prescription drug nonmedically within the
past year”).
School administrators can reasonably conclude that this
high rate of drug abuse is being fueled, at least in part, by
the increasing presence of prescription drugs on school cam
puses. See, e. g., Gibson, Grand Forks Schools See Rise in
Prescription Drug Abuse, Grand Forks Herald, Nov. 16, 2008,
pp. A1, A6 (explaining that “prescription drug abuse is grow
ing into a larger problem” as students “ ‘bring them to school
and sell them or just give them to their friends’ ”). In a
2008 survey, “44 percent of teens sa[id] drugs are used, kept
or sold on the grounds of their schools.” CASA, National
Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XIII:
Teens and Parents 19 (Aug. 2008) (hereinafter National Sur
vey). The risks posed by the abuse of these drugs are every
bit as serious as the dangers of using a typical street drug.
Teenagers are nevertheless apt to “believe the myth that
these drugs provide a medically safe high.” ONDCP, Teens

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and Prescription Drugs: An Analysis of Recent Trends on
the Emerging Drug Threat 3 (Feb. 2007) (hereinafter Teens
and Prescription Drugs). But since 1999, there has “been a
dramatic increase in the number of poisonings and even
deaths associated with the abuse of prescription drugs.”
Prescription for Danger 4; see also Dept. of Health and
Human Services, The NSDUH Report: Trends in Nonmedi
cal Use of Prescription Pain Relievers: 2002 to 2007, p. 1
(Feb. 5, 2009) (“[A]pproximately 324,000 emergency depart
ment visits in 2006 involved the nonmedical use of pain re
lievers”); CASA, Under the Counter: The Diversion and
Abuse of Controlled Prescription Drugs in the U. S., p. 25
(July 2005) (“In 2002, abuse of controlled prescription drugs
was implicated in at least 23 percent of drug-related emer
gency department admissions and 20.4 percent of all sin
gle drug-related emergency department deaths”). At least
some of these injuries and deaths are likely due to the fact
that “[m]ost controlled prescription drug abusers are poly
substance abusers,” id., at 3, a habit that is especially likely
to result in deadly drug combinations. Furthermore, even
if a child is not immediately harmed by the abuse of prescrip
tion drugs, research suggests that prescription drugs have
become “gateway drugs to other substances of abuse.” Id.,
at 4; Healy, Skipping the Street, Los Angeles Times, Sept.
15, 2008, p. F1 (“Boomers made marijuana their ‘gateway’ . . .
but a younger generation finds prescription drugs are an eas
ier score”); see also National Survey 17 (noting that teens
report “that prescription drugs are easier to buy than beer”).
Admittedly, the ibuprofen and naproxen at issue in this
case are not the prescription painkillers at the forefront of
the prescription-drug-abuse problem. See Prescription for
Danger 3 (“Pain relievers like Vicodin and OxyContin are
the prescription drugs most commonly abused by teens”).
But they are not without their own dangers. As nonsteroi
dal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), they pose a risk of
death from overdose. The Pill Book 821, 827 (H. Silverman

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ed., 13th ed. 2008) (observing that ibuprofen and naproxen
are NSAIDs and “[p]eople have died from NSAID over
doses”). Moreover, the side effects caused by the use of
NSAIDs can be magnified if they are taken in combination
with other drugs. See, e. g., Reactions Weekly, No. 1235,
p. 18 (Jan. 17, 2009) (“A 17-year-old girl developed allergic
interstitial nephritis and renal failure while receiving escita
lopram and ibuprofen”); id., No. 1232, at 26 (Dec. 13, 2008)
(“A 16-month-old boy developed iron deficiency anaemia and
hypoalbuminaemia during treatment with naproxen”); id.,
No. 1220, at 15 (Sept. 20, 2008) (18-year-old “was diagnosed
with pill-induced oesophageal perforation” after taking ibu
profen “and was admitted to the [intensive care unit]”); id.,
No. 1170, at 20 (Sept. 22, 2007) (“A 12-year-old boy developed
anaphylaxis following ingestion of ibuprofen”).
If a student with a previously unknown intolerance to ibu
profen or naproxen were to take either drug and become ill,
the public outrage would likely be directed toward the school
for failing to take steps to prevent the unmonitored use of
the drug. In light of the risks involved, a school’s deci
sion to establish and enforce a school prohibition on the
possession of any unauthorized drug is thus a reasonable
judgment.6
* * *
In determining whether the search’s scope was reason
able under the Fourth Amendment, it is therefore ir
relevant whether officials suspected Redding of possessing
6 Schools have a significant interest in protecting all students from pre
scription drug abuse; young female students are no exception. See Teens
and Prescription Drugs 2 (“Prescription drugs are the most commonly
abused drug among 12–13-year-olds”). In fact, among 12- to 17-year-olds,
females are “more likely than boys to have abused prescription drugs” and
have “higher rates of dependence or abuse involving prescription drugs.”
Id., at 5. Thus, rather than undermining the relevant governmental in
terest here, Redding’s age and sex, if anything, increased the need for a
search to prevent the reasonably suspected use of prescription drugs.

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prescription-strength ibuprofen, nonprescription-strength
naproxen, or some harder street drug. Safford prohibited
its possession on school property. Reasonable suspicion that
Redding was in possession of drugs in violation of these poli
cies, therefore, justified a search extending to any area
where small pills could be concealed. The search did not
violate the Fourth Amendment.
II
By declaring the search unreasonable in this case, the ma
jority has “ ‘surrender[ed] control of the American public
school system to public school students’ ” by invalidating
school policies that treat all drugs equally and by second
guessing swift disciplinary decisions made by school officials.
See Morse, 551 U. S., at 421 (Thomas, J., concurring) (quoting
Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School Dist.,
393 U. S. 503, 526 (1969) (Black, J., dissenting)). The Court’s
interference in these matters of great concern to teachers,
parents, and students illustrates why the most constitution
ally sound approach to the question of applying the Fourth
Amendment in local public schools would in fact be the com
plete restoration of the common-law doctrine of in loco
parentis.
“[I]n the early years of public schooling,” courts applied
the doctrine of in loco parentis to transfer to teachers the
authority of a parent to “ ‘command obedience, to control
stubbornness, to quicken diligence, and to reform bad hab
its.’ ” Morse, supra, at 413–414 (Thomas, J., concurring)
(quoting State v. Pendergrass, 19 N. C. 365, 365–366 (1837)).
So empowered, schoolteachers and administrators had al
most complete discretion to establish and enforce the rules
they believed were necessary to maintain control over their
classrooms. See 2 J. Kent, Commentaries on American Law
*205 (“So the power allowed by law to the parent over the
person of the child may be delegated to a tutor or instructor,
the better to accomplish the purpose of education”); 1 W.

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Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 441
(1765) (“He may also delegate part of his parental authority,
during his life, to the tutor or schoolmaster of his child; who
is then in loco parentis, and has such a portion of the power
of the parent committed to his charge, viz. that of restraint
and correction, as may be necessary to answer the purposes
for which he is employed”).7 The perils of judicial policy
making inherent in applying Fourth Amendment protections
to public schools counsel in favor of a return to the under
standing that existed in this Nation’s first public schools,
which gave teachers discretion to craft the rules needed to
carry out the disciplinary responsibilities delegated to them
by parents.
If the common-law view that parents delegate to teachers
their authority to discipline and maintain order were to be
applied in this case, the search of Redding would stand.
There can be no doubt that a parent would have had the
authority to conduct the search at issue in this case. Par
ents have “immunity from the strictures of the Fourth
Amendment” when it comes to searches of a child or that
child’s belongings. T. L. O., 469 U. S., at 337; see also id., at
336 (A parent’s authority is “not subject to the limits of the
Fourth Amendment”); Griffin v. Wisconsin, 483 U. S. 868,
876 (1987) (“[P]arental custodial authority” does not require
“judicial approval for [a] search of a minor child’s room”).
As acknowledged by this Court, this principle is based on
the “societal understanding of superior and inferior” with
respect to the “parent and child” relationship. Georgia v.
Randolph, 547 U. S. 103, 114 (2006). In light of this relation
7 The one aspect of school discipline with respect to which the judiciary
at times became involved was the “imposition of excessive physical punish
ment.” Morse, 551 U. S., at 416 (Thomas, J., concurring). Some early
courts found corporal punishment proper “as long as the teacher did not
act with legal malice or cause permanent injury”; while other courts inter
vened only if the punishment was “clearly excessive.” Ibid. (emphasis
deleted; internal quotation marks omitted) (collecting decisions).

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ship, the Court has indicated that a parent can authorize a
third-party search of a child by consenting to such a search,
even if the child denies his consent. See ibid.; see also 4 W.
LaFave, Search and Seizure § 8.3(d), p. 160 (4th ed. 2004)
(“[A] father, as the head of the household with the responsi
bility and the authority for the discipline, training and con
trol of his children, has a superior interest in the family
residence to that of his minor son, so that the father’s con
sent to search would be effective notwithstanding the son’s
contemporaneous on-the-scene objection” (internal quotation
marks omitted)). Certainly, a search by the parent himself
is no different, regardless of whether or not a child would
prefer to be left alone. See id., § 8.4(b), at 202 (“[E]ven [if]
a minor child . . . may think of a room as ‘his,’ the overall
dominance will be in his parents” (some internal quotation
marks omitted)).
Restoring the common-law doctrine of in loco parentis
would not, however, leave public schools entirely free to im
pose any rule they choose. “If parents do not like the rules
imposed by those schools, they can seek redress in school
boards or legislatures; they can send their children to private
schools or homeschool them; or they can simply move.” See
Morse, supra, at 420 (Thomas, J., concurring). Indeed, par
ents and local government officials have proved themselves
quite capable of challenging overly harsh school rules or the
enforcement of sensible rules in insensible ways.
For example, one community questioned a school policy
that resulted in “an 11-year-old [being] arrested, handcuffed
and taken to jail for bringing a plastic butter knife to school.”
Downey, Zero Tolerance Doesn’t Always Add Up, Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, Apr. 6, 2009, p. A11. In another, “[a]t
least one school board member was outraged” when 14
elementary-school students were suspended for “imitating
drug activity” after they combined Kool-Aid and sugar in
plastic bags. Grant, Pupils Trading Sweet Mix Get Sour

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Shot of Discipline, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 18, 2006,
pp. B1, B2. Individuals within yet another school district
protested a “ ‘zero-tolerance’ policy toward weapons” that
had become “ ‘so rigid that it force[d] schools to expel any
student who belongs to a military organization, a drum-and
bugle corps or any other legitimate extracurricular group
and is simply transporting what amounts to harmless
props.’ ” Richardson, School Gun Case Sparks Cries For
“Common Sense,” Washington Times, Feb. 13–14, 2009,
pp. A1, A9.8
These local efforts to change controversial school policies
through democratic processes have proved successful in
many cases. See, e. g., Postal, Schools’ Zero Tolerance
Could Lose Some Punch, Orlando Sentinel, Apr. 24, 2009,
p. B3 (“State lawmakers want schools to dial back strict
zero-tolerance policies so students do not end up in juvenile
detention for some ‘goofy thing’ ”); Richardson, Tolerance
Waning for Zero-tolerance Rules, Washington Times, Apr.
21, 2009, p. A3 (“[A] few states have moved to relax their
laws. Utah now allows students to bring asthma inhalers
to school without violating the zero-tolerance policy on
8 See also, e. g., Smydo, Allderdice Parents Decry Suspensions, Pitts
burgh Post-Gazette, Apr. 16, 2009, p. B1 (Parents “believe a one-day sus
pension for a first-time hallway infraction is an overreaction”); O’Brien &
Buckham, Girl’s Smooch on School Bus Leads to Suspension, Buffalo
News, Jan. 6, 2008, p. B1 (Parents of 6-year-old say the “school officials
overreacted” when they punished their daughter for “kissing a second
grade boy”); Stewart, Dad Says School Overreacted, Houston Chronicle,
Dec. 12, 2007, p. B5 (“The father of a 13-year-old . . . said the school district
overstepped its bounds when it suspended his daughter for taking a cell
phone photo of another cheerleader getting out of the shower during a
sleepover in his home”); Dumenigo & Mueller, “Cops and Robbers” Sus
pension Criticized at Sayreville School, Star-Ledger (New Jersey), Apr. 6,
2000, p. 15 (“ ‘I think it’s ridiculous,’ said the mother of one of the [kinder
garten] boys. ‘They’re little boys playing with each other. . . . [W]hen did
a finger become a weapon?’ ”).

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drugs”); see also Nussbaum, Becoming Fed Up With Zero
Tolerance, N. Y. Times, Sept. 3, 2000, section 14, pp. 1, 8 (dis
cussing a report that found that “widespread use of zero
tolerance discipline policies was creating as many problems
as it was solving and that there were many cases around
the country in which students were harshly disciplined for
infractions where there was no harm intended or done”).
In the end, the task of implementing and amending public
school policies is beyond this Court’s function. Parents,
teachers, school administrators, local politicians, and state
officials are all better suited than judges to determine the
appropriate limits on searches conducted by school officials.
Preservation of order, discipline, and safety in public schools
is simply not the domain of the Constitution. And, com
mon sense is not a judicial monopoly or a constitutional
imperative.
III
“[T]he nationwide drug epidemic makes the war against
drugs a pressing concern in every school.” Board of Ed. of
Independent School Dist. No. 92 of Pottawatomie Cty. v.
Earls, 536 U. S. 822, 834 (2002). And yet the Court has lim
ited the authority of school officials to conduct searches for
the drugs that the officials believe pose a serious safety risk
to their students. By doing so, the majority has confirmed
that a return to the doctrine of in loco parentis is required to
keep the judiciary from essentially seizing control of public
schools. Only then will teachers again be able to “ ‘govern
the[ir] pupils, quicken the slothful, spur the indolent, restrain
the impetuous, and control the stubborn’ ” by making “ ‘rules,
giv[ing] commands, and punish[ing] disobedience’ ” without
interference from judges. Morse, 551 U. S., at 414 (Thomas,
J., concurring). By deciding that it is better equipped to de
cide what behavior should be permitted in schools, the Court
has undercut student safety and undermined the authority of
school administrators and local officials. Even more trou

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bling, it has done so in a case in which the underlying response
by school administrators was reasonable and justified.
I cannot join this regrettable decision. I, therefore, respect
fully dissent from the Court’s determination that this search
violated the Fourth Amendment.