Was the strip search of an eighth-grade girl by school officials an invasion of her privacy? That very question has been the focus of a six-year case that will finally be heard by the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Savana Redding was 13 years old when a student caught with ibuprofen pills said they belonged to her. School officials searched Redding’s backpack and found no pills. Then Redding was called into a private room where a school nurse and female secretary performed a strip search, in which they asked the little girl to pull her underwear and bra aside to expose her private parts. They never found any drugs.

Since the incident in 2003, Redding, now 19, says she’s suffered from bleeding ulcers and a fear of attending school. Her mother says her daughter has never been the same. "They changed my kid, and they need to understand what they took away from her," April Redding told CBS News.

Savana’s mother sued the school system, claiming her daughter’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches or seizures had been violated. A trial court and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit sided with the school. On a re-hearing, the full Ninth Circuit overturned the 2007 decision and insisted officials were not immune from her suit. The school district appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. They claim that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling "upsets the longstanding tradition of deferring to the judgment and expertise of school officials in highly discretionary matters. The result is an opinion wholly uninformed about a disturbing new trend — teens’ abuse of prescription and over-the-counter drugs."

While the war on drugs has been an ongoing battle between school officials and students, some say these faculty members were in the wrong for strip-searching a little girl over one student’s finger-pointing. Many also find this case to be out of line — because the drugs in question weren’t oxytocin, marijuana or cocaine, but ibuprofen pain-relief pills.

In an editorial in USA Today, the paper’s team says they found the school’s actions extreme:

Last time we checked, the war on drugs did not include ibuprofen, and it’s hard to imagine any parent who would not be infuriated by a strip search of his 13-year-old daughter. Such is the absurdity of zero-tolerance policies — be they aimed at drugs, weapons or sexual harassment. They assume that students don’t have rights and that school officials don’t have brains. Better to exercise common sense.

  The New York Times agrees:

The invasion of privacy was extreme and the security rationale weak. The court should rule, as a lower appellate court did, that the search was unconstitutional.

The Washington Post, however, defends the school:

The law has long given school officials special leeway to search lockers and backpacks to enable them to better protect students in their care … The Supreme Court should strike down the lower-court ruling. School officials must have the flexibility to act quickly and decisively to avert all manner of danger. Fear of being sued for making reasonable if controversial judgment calls will only chill these efforts.

Tell us what you think: Was the strip search of an eighth-grade girl by school officials an invasion of her privacy? Was the school justified in performing a strip search when they were concerned about the safety of her and fellow students?