Supreme Court rules against strip searches

Today the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that it was illegal for middle-school officials in Safford, Arizona to strip-search 13-year-old Savana Redding because another student claimed she’d hidden ibuprofen in her bra. The lone dissenting vote was Clarence Thomas.

Thomas warned that the majority’s decision could backfire. “Redding
would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her
undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s
decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in
school.”

That’s not a typo. Jill quips, “Thomas only restates what high school girls everywhere have always known: Your panties are the safest place to secrete. “

On
a more serious note, Amanda ponders what this means for student privacy
rights and power dynamics in schools more generally. She writes,

I doubt it will do much to roll back the problem of zero tolerance policies, however, which are the main problem at hand.  Linking this back to Jesse’s post about discipline patterns and prejudice,
it’s important to understand that in zero tolerance land, it becomes
acceptable to freak out over things like a girl having Midol in her
purse or some boy wears baggy pants.  When anything can be treated like
rock solid evidence of criminality, it becomes super easy to railroad
kids that trip up the school officials’ prejudices.  Not that I don’t
think the school-to-prison pipeline couldn’t exist without zero
tolerance, but I’m guessing it greases the wheels significantly.  The
irony of zero tolerance is that it’s going to be selectively enforced. 
It has to be.  When you can blow pretty much any behavior up to make it
seem criminal, either everyone is turned into a criminal or you simply
focus all your attention on kids that you had your suspicions about
because of their race, family’s income level, or, as in the days after
Columbine, their tendency to wear black clothes and listen to weird
music.

Earlier this week, Justice Thomas was also the sole dissenter in the Court’s decision to uphold Section 5
of the Voting Rights Act, which makes areas with histories of racial
discrimination get federal approval for any changes in the way they run
elections. G.D. at PostBourgie explains the justices’ ambivalence despite the 8-1 decision, and the need for Congress to update the law.