The parents of four 12-year-old Black and Latina students who were allegedly strip-searched by school officials back in January are suing the Binghamton, New York, School District for the incident.

According to the federal complaint, which was filed by NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the law firm Morrison & Foerster, East Middle School officials’ personal racial bias caused them "to interpret the innocent and playful behavior" of the girls "as so suspicious that they conducted the extreme measure of strip searching them."

On Jan. 15, staff at Eastern Middle School noticed the girls were acting giddy and hyper during lunch, which for some reason was deemed uniquely suspicious for a group of pre-teen friends.

Instead of instructing the girls to settle down, the officials suspected they were under the influence of drugs. The school nurse and assistant principal allegedly conducted a strip search on the girls in the nurses office to check for any drug paraphernalia.

“At the health office, the school nurse conducted intrusive and demeaning searches, which involved the removal of various articles of clothing, at the direction and at times with the assistance of the principal and/or assistant principal,” the Legal Defense Fund said in a statement. “The girls were also subjected to humiliating comments during the searches. None of the girls’ parents were contacted before the search occurred. The girls have since been moved to a different school within the District.”

Chanderlia Silva, the mother to one of the students involved, told ESSENCE she was never contacted or told about the search until her daughter detailed the incident to her.

“If the school has a suspicion of anything, the first thing [the principal] should have done was call me,” Silva said. “The procedure was just totally incorrect… And not only that, that school has cameras, so it should have been nothing for them to go back to their cameras to see where the girls were. But instead, they just went off of assumptions, which I feel was based off of the color of their skin, because they were females, and classism. We’re not higher class. So, I just feel like they were just being judged all around the board.”

Once the incident gained national attention, the school denied conducting a strip search on the girls. Even after the lawsuit was announced, the school maintains their position, saying an internal investigation found no such incident occurred, according to WNBF radio.