10 Supreme Court Cases Every Teen Should Know (Part 2)

AoW 18 10 Supreme Court Cases Every Teen Should Know (Part 2) By Tom Jacobs, The New York Times Upfront, September 5, 2011

United States v. Virginia (1996) Issue: Gender Equality in College

Bottom line: Single-sex public colleges are almost always unconstitutional.

Background: For more than 150 years, the prestigious Virginia Military Institute operated as a male-only public military academy. But in 1990, after a female high school student filed a complaint, the Justice Department sued the state of Virginia, arguing that V.M.I.’s admissions policy violated the equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Virginia tried to settle the matter in 1995 by creating the all-female Virginia Women’s Institute for leadership. But concerns about V.W.I.L. pushed the case to the high court.

Ruling: The Court was faced with two questions: Was V.M.I.’s all-male admissions policy constitutional? And if not, did the all-female school fix the problem? On both counts, the Supreme Court ruled no. In a 7-to-1 decision (a Justice whose son attended V.M.I. did not participate), the Court said that the state must have “an exceedingly persuasive justification” for treating men and women differently. Virginia’s reasons – including fear that women wouldn’t be able to keep up with V.M.I.’s rigorous boot- camp- style curriculum- were not convincing. The Court also said the all-female program Virginia had created was inferior to V.M.I, in nearly every respect, including training, course offerings, and faculty quality.

Impact: In a dissenting opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia expressed concern that the decision would eventually mean the end of private single-sex institutions that receive public funding. In theory, the V. M. I. ruling leaves room for states to create single-sex colleges, but the criteria for good reasons to do so isn’t clear. “The Court in V.M.I. doesn’t say that separate is inherently unequal” in gender cases, according to Jonathan Entin, a law professor at Case Western University in Cleveland, “although it comes pretty close.” The decision also applied to the then-all-male Citadel, a military academy in South Carolina and the only other single-sex public college in the U.S. at the time. Both V.M.I. and the Citadel are now coed.

Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe (2000)

Issue: School prayer

Bottom line: Public schools cannot sponsor religious activities like group prayer.

Background: A Texas school district allowed a student “chaplain,” who had been elected by fellow students, to lead a prayer over the public-address system before home football games. Several students and their parents anonymously sued the school district, claiming a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Ruling: The Supreme Court ruled that the district’s policy regarding prayer was unconstitutional. Although led by a student, the prayers were still a school-sponsored activity, the Court said, and they were coercive because they placed students in the position of having to participate in a religious ceremony. “The Constitution demands that schools not force on students the difficult choice between attending these games and avoiding personally offensive religions rituals,” the Court said. The Justices added that “nothing in the Constitution . . . prohibits any public school student from voluntary praying at any time before, during, or after the school day.”

Impact: Since the Santa Fe decision, several lower courts have held that student-initiated group prayer is protected by the First Amendment if it is not sponsored by the school. This is generally understood to mean that a group of student athletes, for example, could pray together before a game in the locker room, as long as the coach or other school officials are not involved.

Safford United School District v. April Redding (2009)

Issue: Privacy rights at school

Bottom line: The Court made it harder for schools to conduct strip searches.

Background: Savana Redding was in eighth grade the day a school nurse and a secretary at Safford Middle School in Arizona asked the 13-year-old to strip down to her bra and underwear. They were acting on orders from the assistant principal, who had gotten a tip from another student that Redding, now 21, was hiding prescription-strength ibuprofen pills. The tip turned out to be false, but the school, which had a zero-tolerance drug policy, said the strip search was justified. Redding said she was humiliated and that her constitutional right against unreasonable searches was violated. Her mother, April, sued.

Ruling: In an 8-to-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the school had violated Redding’s Fourth Amendment rights because the “content of the suspicion failed to match the degree of the intrusion.” But it also said the school couldn’t be sued because the laws on student searches were unclear in 2003, when the search took place. The Court then clarified guidelines for intimate searches: School officials must consider factors like the student’s age, whether the drugs in question are dangerous enough to justify the search, and whether there is good enough to suspect that the student had hidden dangerous drugs in an intimate place on his or her body.

Impact: The Redding ruling elaborates on New Jersey v. T.L.O. (1985). In that case, the Court said that schools have the right to search students’ possessions, including backpacks and lo0ckers, if there is “reasonable suspicion” that a rule has been broken. The ruling didn’t mention anything about intimate body searches. Many states, including New Jersey, California, and Iowa, have passed legislation prohibiting strip searches of students under any circumstances, and Wisconsin treats it as a criminal act.

Answer the following: 1. Summarize the three cases in 1-2 paragraphs. 2. Why do you think the Justices decided that teens should be viewed differently under the law? 3. Why might the Court view individual rights differently in a school environment?