The U.S. Supreme Court held last Thursday, in Safford Unified School District v. Redding, that school officials in Arizona who illegally strip searched a teen girl to find two Advil tablets were immune from damages because the law on school searches is unclear.

In an 8 – 1 decision (with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lone female on the court, dissenting), the court found that the search was unconstitutional. But instead of banning strip searches altogether, it found them permissible if school officials have substantial reason to conclude a student is concealing a dangerous object or substance.

The ruling brings little solace to public school students, who have, since the 1985 case New Jersey v. T.L.O., been subject to being searched at school as long as the search is “reasonable in all respects.”

This vague standard has led to absurd results; in one case, school officials strip searched a group of young students to find a fellow student’s missing lunch money. And several other cases show how little protection students have against being strip searched if school officials believe they have reason to do so.

For example, in Cornfield by Lewis v. Consolidated High School District, a high school teacher told school officials that one of her students appeared to be so “well endowed” that she suspected him of “crotching drugs.” School officials took the student into a locker room, made him remove all his clothing and discovered only that the teacher’s imagination had gotten the better of her. But despite having found no contraband, a court found the invasion of the boy’s privacy lawful because school officials had “reasonably suspected” he possessed drugs.

Similarly, in Doe v. Renfrow, school officials relied upon a drug-sniffing dog’s agitated reaction to justify a strip search of a female student. They found no drugs, but the girl later recalled that before coming to school she had been playing with her own dog, which was in heat. The drug dog had picked up the scent. That search was upheld, too.

In Fewless v. Board of Education, a high school student seeking lenient treatment by school security officials told them that another boy had marijuana hidden on his person “in his butt-crack.” Based solely upon this tip, security guards ordered the accused to lower his pants and spread his buttocks so that they could inspect him. In this Michigan case, the court held the search illegal. But now that the U.S. Supreme Court has found the law regarding such searches ambiguous, it’s doubtful that it would do so if a similar case were to occur.

And in Phaneuf v. Fraikin, a student told a teacher that a girl confessed that she planned to avoid a backpack search for drugs by stuffing “marijuana down her pants.” Based upon this tip, school officials performed the search, but found no marijuana. A district court upheld the search, but a 2nd Circuit Court later reversed it.

Wisely, the California Legislature and about six other states ban strip searches by school officials. The California Education Code § 49050 prohibits searches that involve “a body cavity search of a pupil manually or with an instrument, or removing or arranging any or all of the clothing of a pupil to permit a visual inspection of the underclothing, breast, buttocks, or genitalia of the pupil.”

California’s policy is a good one, and Congress should follow it. Regardless of the Supreme Court’s holding, Congress can amend the Family Educational Rights Privacy Act to include a ban on strip searches performed in schools receiving federal aid.

As it stands, federal law bars schools from misusing student records, but enables schools to violate students’ bodily privacy.

While it’s good news that, by declaring the search in the Redding case to be unconstitutional, the U.S. Supreme Court put some limits on strip searches, the court should make strip searches of students illegal per se. If school officials believe that a student possesses weapons or dangerous drugs, they should refer the matter to law enforcement professionals.

Otherwise, students are vulnerable to invasive searches based upon nothing more than hunches. Indeed, some school policies are so extreme that students could even be subject to strip searches to find mobile phones, iPods or any other devices the school bans.