Strip Searches

The Supreme Court gave a skeptical hearing Tuesday to lawyers for a girl who was strip-searched in school when she was 13 on suspicion that she had extra-strength ibuprofen in her underwear. Instead, most of the justices voiced concern about drugs, such as heroin and crack cocaine, and said they were wary of limiting officials' authority to search students for any drugs. "How is a school administrator supposed to know?" Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked.

Common sense and constitutional law don't always come to the same conclusion, but the U.S. Supreme Court has done justice to both in ruling that an Arizona middle school violated the 4th Amendment by subjecting a 13-year-old girl to a strip search. With only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting, the court has drawn a bright line that school officials will transgress at their legal peril.

State corrections officials said Friday that they were investigating whether guards at a Southern California prison improperly watched video of female inmates being strip-searched. The investigation arose after the husband of an inmate, during a visit earlier this month to the California Institution for Women in Chino, noticed about six male and female guards gathered around a video monitor in the reception area for prison visitors. The black-and-white monitor showed women being searched by female guards in a nearby room typically used for visitation.

Schools may not strip-search students for drugs based on an unverified tip, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. Overturning two other rulings, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said an assistant principal at an Arizona middle school violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old by ordering her to be strip-searched. He thought the honor student had prescription-strength ibuprofen; she did not.

Authorities called in the bomb squad early Tuesday and diverted a flight to Las Vegas after Los Angeles International Airport security screeners found hidden wires and other objects in a body cavity of a Philadelphia-bound passenger. Fadhel Al-Maliki, a 35-year-old Iraqi national living in Atlantic City, N.J., had been flagged by security officials at LAX and was undergoing a secondary "selectee screening" when he set off a metal detector.

San Bernardino County officials have agreed to pay $25.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that said jailers conducted illegal strip searches, sometimes in front of inmates and deputies of the opposite sex. As many as 160,000 inmates may have been subjected to the searches over three years, attorneys for the plaintiffs said, and each could get several hundred dollars, depending on how many apply for the award.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that the body-cavity check of a woman booked into the Ventura County Jail on suspicion of being under the influence of a controlled substance was unconstitutional. The 9th Circuit agreed Thursday that the check violated Noelle Way's rights against illegal search and seizure because there was no reasonable suspicion that she had concealed drugs.

The Homeland Security Department sent a letter apologizing to a Muslim woman who was detained at the Tampa airport and strip-searched at a county jail. Safana Jawad, 45, a Spanish citizen who was born in Iraq, was detained April 11 because of a suspected tie to a suspicious person, authorities said. She was held for two days before being deported to Britain. Jawad filed a complaint, and the agency apologized in a letter dated Dec. 8.

Three men who say Oakland police conducted strip searches of them in public for no reason have filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the city. Darnell Foster, Rafael Duarte and Yancie Young said officers exposed and inspected their buttocks on busy Oakland streets in separate incidents from 2003 to 2005. The department has since drafted a policy requiring officers to conduct searches away from public view.

A federal judge has ruled that the city's former policy allowing new prisoners to be strip-searched, regardless of the charges against them, was unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled last week that the policy, which was changed in January 2004, violated constitutional rules allowing such searches only when inmates are newly arrested on suspicion of crimes involving drugs or violence, or when guards have evidence that an inmate is concealing weapons or contraband.