Across the country, children and teenagers are being strip searched by school administrators and staff, who are often looking for vape pens or other minor contraband.
Forty federal civil rights lawsuits have been filed against school districts nationwide since 2017. Bloomberg Law reporters Diana Dombrowski and Emily Siegel investigated these incidents from 19 states, including Ohio.
They found the searches had a traumatizing impact on kids who underwent them.
“Kids can't distinguish between what's a search and what's abuse,” investigative reporter Dombrowski said. “So if a part of their body that's normally covered is exposed in front of an adult who's not a doctor or their parent, it registers as really harmful.”
Dombrowski and Siegel joined The Ohio Newsroom to share their reporting.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On lawsuits filed in Ohio against strip searches
SIEGEL: “We spoke to Kristen Yeckley. She's a mom in Ohio. She is based around Cleveland and her daughter was strip searched in 2022 at her middle school when she was 13. She was allegedly searched because they thought she had possession of a vape pen. She was brought to the nurse's office where she had to remove all of her clothing except for her underwear. After the incident, Kristen filed suit against the school and they settled the case.”
“Aside from Yeckley’s case, we had found three other cases of strip searching alleged in Ohio. One involved a 10-year-old whose pants and shirt were pulled above his chest while they were looking for signs of abuse. Another involved two staff members who had a 7-year-old take off her leggings and underwear while they were searching for $3 that she allegedly stole. Both of those cases settled. The third one involved a principal who conducted a vaginal examination after a teacher reported that the student had been scratching the area and they were concerned that she had been abused. The child was in kindergarten.”
On the legality of the searches
DOMBROWSKI: “The people who file these lawsuits are arguing that they're not [legal] under the Fourth Amendment: unreasonable search and seizure. The problem is that there's some gray area with the Fourth Amendment. The search has to be reasonable in its scope. If there's not a state law that specifically says you can't strip search a child, there's sort of this gray area of what's considered reasonable. So depending on who you are and what the circumstances are, what are you looking for and how old the child is, your interpretation of that could be different. So really it's just a lack of specificity.”
SEIGEL: “Ohio doesn't have a specific policy about strip searching students. It defers to the local county school boards to make up their search and seizure policies. So, in Kristen Yeckley's instance, their school had a search and seizure policy – which usually includes things like they can search their lockers or things like backpacks – but it didn't address strip searches. So it just depends on each school district in Ohio.”
On the traumatic impact of these searches
DOMBROWSKI: “These kids are traumatized. Kids can't distinguish between what's a search and what's abuse. So if a part of their body that's normally covered is exposed in front of an adult who's not a doctor or their parent, it registers as really harmful. These kids have PTSD. They don't have trust in authority afterward. They don't really understand how an adult in a position of power could ask them to remove clothes in front of them at school. So it's really damaging to kids.”
