Thursday, June 25, 2009

SCOTUS rules for privacy rights

At last! SCOTUS finally got one right. On an 8-1 vote, they found the strip search of a teenage girl by school officials to be an unconstitutional violation of privacy. An easy and logical conclusion. They were searching for one freaking high grade Advil for crying out loud. Unsurprisingly, Clarence Thomas was the dissenter on that one.

Of course, the court was only half right on this case. They voted 7-2 to excuse the school because the law wasn't settled at the time of the search and assume the school was just being overprotective in deference to the parents. But as Justice Ginsburg noted in her dissent, the assistant principal, "made Savana sit on a chair outside his office for more than two hours." “At no point did he attempt to call her parent,” Justice Ginsburg wrote. “Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity.” Damn straight.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

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2 Comments:

Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

It's interesting that it follows right on the heels of the hysteria the media is promoting over the terrorist watch list. The demand is that suspicion should be sufficient to deprive someone of his constitutional rights without due process.

These horrors exist because millions of activists are out there telling us of the horrors of Advil in the schools and the horrible threat of bearded men with guns and we let them get away with it unopposed.

Democrats are quite guilty of this but of course we have no one to blame for allowing Clarence Thomas on the court but the Republicans. He's about arbitrary authority for the sake of arbitrary authority to the point where the 4th amendment means nothing whatever to him.

9:59:00 AM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

Thomas is a thug in robes. But I'm glad to see at least some small bit of the zero tolerance insanity nixed. And they wonder why kids grow up with no respect for authority.

11:17:00 AM  

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