Middle-School Strip Search Ruled Unconstitutional 528
yuna49 writes "The US Supreme Court today ruled 8-1 that the strip search of a 13-year-old girl by officials in an Arizona middle school was unconstitutional. However, by a vote of 7-2, the Court also ruled that the individual school officials could not be held personally liable. A suit for damages against the school district itself is still going forward. We discussed this case at length back in March when the Court decided to hear the case on appeal."
For once, read TFA. (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, I'll admit that, like most Slashdotters, I skip the occasional article and jump straight into the comments, but people should really take the time to read this one!
For instance:
and
The discussion about wether the School Administrator should be held responsible is similarly contentious.
Its nice to know that they chose well on upholding her rights, but its sad how close a thing it seems from the article.
Re:And the "!" in the 8 to 1 is... (Score:2, Informative)
Does this surprise you? Thomas' opinion of the law is pretty much the government can do whatever it wants, as long as its not done by a democrat.
Qualified Immunity (Score:4, Informative)
It is interesting to note that the two Justices that dissented regarding whether or not the school officials were covered by qualified immunity were Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and that Justice Souter was a part of the majority. If Sotomayor is placed on the bench, it is feasible she would rule much closer to Justice Ginsburg and Stevens then to Souter on these types of matters.
Re:And the "!" in the 8 to 1 is... (Score:5, Informative)
Thomas has had a lot of history with the 4th amendment, usually siding with the enforcement side, so maybe his decision isn't too surprising.
See: Samson v. California, or Board of Education v. Earls. However, in Kyllo v. United States he agreed with the defendant that thermal imaging without a warrant violates the 4th.
Re:This is America (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I want you around my kids.
You're responding to Anonymous Coward.
Rule #1 of parenting is never leave your kids alone with someone until after they agree to tell you their name.
Re:This is America (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is America (Score:4, Informative)
2) 2 adults (never put a single adult with a child or you get accusations) go in the bathroom with the child
3) child goes in the stall ALONE, adults wait outside the stall
4) child is NOT allowed to flush
5) adult checks toilet after child has used it
It's not that hard people. As long as they don't flush (which is EASY to hear) and you watch them wash their hands (no problem there), you are good. If anyone suspects something was left in the bathroom it is easy to check.
Re:All bark, no bite (Score:3, Informative)
The point is that these searches are now against the law and future officials can be held liable. It this search had already been a violation of clearly established law, the case would have never made it to the Supreme Court. See Qualified immunity [wikipedia.org].
Re:This is America (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This is America (Score:2, Informative)
I'd argue that it's the fact that people give too much attention to authority and blindly do whatever they're told to do. How difficult is it to scream 'get out of my pants you paedophile!' ?
It's everyone's duty to ensure that a correct balance of power is maintained. Those in 'authority' need to be challenged whenever they overstep the bounds of that authority.
This applies to you too Mr 65lb weakling with a 350lb wife. The phrase "I need to eat too!" can be useful on occasion. (I'm prolly gonna get modded into oblivion for this but what the heck? - excellent karma is getting old :)
Re:sue the school? (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. Iit is not written (or stored in a permanent form) defamation of it is employees.
Re:This is America (Score:3, Informative)
there was no way the administrators could have been expected to know whether their actions were constitutional.
The problem with this though is that the Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure [usconstitution.net] specifically states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
If admin in a US public school does not understand that then they should never have graduated.
Falcon
Re:This is America (Score:3, Informative)
Bah, we threw that old thing out for drunk driving checkpoints. We violate it every single time anyone flys commercially. We violate it every time anyone enters a public government building. We especially violate it when you show up for legally required jury duty, and are unconstitutionally searched before being allowed to comply with the summons.
Re:Clarence Thomas's Copy of the Constitution (Score:2, Informative)
Read what the judge actually wrote.
The thing is, he's right. More to the point, the legality or otherwise of strip searches on students in public schools is not a topic that is present on any level in the American constitution. Your constitution does not protect your children against any level of unreasonable search when you hand them over to public servants acting in loco parentis. The laws might, but there don't seem to be any in this case. Another shock example of how a 240 year old constitution can become a little out of date.
Justice Clarence has strong views [wikipedia.org] on the power and rights of American schools over their students. Essentially, he believes that once children attend a school, that school becomes a kind of quasi-parent, with concrete rights over that childs entire upbringing, at least in so far as behavior and discipline is concerned.
As far as I can tell, Justice Clarence's view, outrageous as it is, reflects the de facto relationship between schools and their students. American schools have frightingly broad powers over their student's lives.
Re:All bark, no bite (Score:2, Informative)
Re:All bark, no bite (Score:3, Informative)
From Section IV of the majority opinion, edited to remove the citations (which, clearly, you weren't going to read anyway)(and with * marking the space between paragraphs, because slashdot is afraid of longish texts):
* ... in novel factual circumstances." Hope v. Pelzer. ... [in] the wide variety of possible school settings different from those involved in T.L.O." itself. See also Thomas v. Roberts (granting qualified immunity to a teacher and police officer who conducted a group strip search of a fifth grade class when looking for a missing $26).
A school official searching a student is "entitled to qualified immunity where clearly established law does not show that the search violated the Fourth Amendment." Pearson v. Callahan. To be established clearly, however, there is no need that "the very action in question [have] previously been held unlawful." Wilson v. Layne. The unconstitutionality of outrageous conduct obviously will be unconstitutional, this being the reason, as Judge Posner has said, that "[t]he easiest cases don't even arise." K.H. v. Morgan. But even as to action less than an outrage, "officials can still be on notice that their conduct violates established law
*
[New Jersey v. T.L. O.] directed school officials to limit the intrusiveness of a search, "in light of the age and sex of the student and the nature of the infraction," and as we have just said at some length, the intrusiveness of the strip search here cannot be seen as justifiably related to the circumstances. But we realize that the lower courts have reached divergent conclusions regarding how the T.L.O. standard applies to such searches.
*
A number of judges have read T.L.O. as the en banc minority of the Ninth Circuit did here. The Sixth Circuit upheld a strip search of a high school student for a drug, without any suspicion that drugs were hidden next to her body. Williams v. Ellington. And other courts considering qualified immunity for strip searches have read T.L.O. as "a series of abstractions, on the one hand, and a declaration of seeming deference to the judgments of school officials, on the other," Jenkins v. Talladega City Bd. of Ed., which made it impossible "to establish clearly the contours of a Fourth Amendment right
*
We think these differences of opinion from our own are substantial enough to require immunity for the school officials in this case. We would not suggest that entitlement to qualified immunity is the guaranteed product of disuniform views of the law in the other federal, or state, courts, and the fact that a single judge, or even a group of judges, disagrees about the contours of a right does not automatically render the law unclear if we have been clear. That said, however, the cases viewing school strip searches differently from the way we see them are numerous enough, with well-reasoned majority and dissenting opinions, to counsel doubt that we were sufficiently clear in the prior statement of law. We conclude that qualified immunity is warranted.