Cite as: 536 U. S. 822 (2002)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
tion of this message does not trump the right of persons— even of children within the schoolhouse gate—to be "secure in their persons . . . against unreasonable searches and seizures." U. S. Const., Amdt. 4.
In Chandler, the Court referred to a pathmarking dissenting opinion in which "Justice Brandeis recognized the importance of teaching by example: 'Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example.' " 520 U. S., at 322 (quoting Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438, 485 (1928)). That wisdom should guide decisionmakers in the instant case: The government is nowhere more a teacher than when it runs a public school.
It is a sad irony that the petitioning School District seeks to justify its edict here by trumpeting "the schools' custodial and tutelary responsibility for children." Vernonia, 515 U. S., at 656. In regulating an athletic program or endeavoring to combat an exploding drug epidemic, a school's custodial obligations may permit searches that would otherwise unacceptably abridge students' rights. When custodial duties are not ascendant, however, schools' tutelary obligations to their students require them to "teach by example" by avoiding symbolic measures that diminish constitutional protections. "That [schools] are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes." West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624, 637 (1943).
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For the reasons stated, I would affirm the judgment of the Tenth Circuit declaring the testing policy at issue unconstitutional.
855
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