“Because the school officials searched in a location where the pills could have been hidden, the search was reasonable in scope under T.L. O.”
Yikes!! Hello all you civil liberties fans. The above-referenced quotation comes from a solo dissent from Justice Thomas where he and he alone found nothing constitutionally offensive about the strip search (or not-quite-a-strip-search according to Thomas) of a high school student suspected of possessing illegal drugs. When you can’t get Scalia, Alito, or Roberts on board, you know you are out on a limb. Perhaps the other conservatives on the court felt a strip search was a bit extreme where the drugs at issue were ibuprofen and naxoprin.
Happily, Justice Thomas (in a footnote) appears to draw a distinction between strip searches and body cavity searches. Here’s hoping the court never has to rule on those facts.
now I know what it’s like to be a cop in south central LA.