School Strip-Search Case Heads to Supreme Court

And sounds skeptical

(NEWSER) - Savana Redding’s lawyers made their case before the Supreme Court yesterday, condemning the strip-search of a 13-year-old in a hunt for ibuprofen as unreasonable search and seizure. But the justices were skeptical, the LA Times reports, with their questions indicating they were leery of limiting school officials’ powers to look for drugs, which might be more serious than ibuprofen. “How is the school administrator supposed to know?” asked John Roberts. More»

Supreme Court is just following our lead

(NEWSER) - The Supreme Court's ruling upholding prisoner strip-searches is an indicator of a much wider trend. Such searches compromise human dignity, but in the court case, not even the dissenting justices argued against all strip-searches, writes Noah Feldman in Bloomberg . That's because "privacy, as we know it, is dying." And the justices—particularly Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion—"rarely fight the trend of history." And that trend isn't limited to the courtroom. More»

(AP) - An Arizona middle school's strip search of a teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal, the Supreme Court ruled today. School officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding, the justices said in an 8-1 ruling. Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when school officials ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills. No pills were found. More»

Or at least, with parts of it

(NEWSER) - Today the Supreme Court heard the final arguments in the case over Arizona's controversial immigration law, and it's not looking good for the Obama administration. Justices seemed decidedly skeptical about the Justice Department's central argument that the law impinged on the federal government's power to control immigration, the Washington Post reports. "What could possibly be wrong," John Roberts asked, with having police check detainees' immigration status, and pass the information to the federal government? More»

Politically-charged case could echo in November

(NEWSER) - Just weeks ago, it was the ObamaCare tussle . Now the Supreme Court is moving on to another politically-charged, high-profile case: a battle over Arizona's controversial immigration law. The case centers on whether Arizona overstepped the boundaries of state power with aggressive police checks on suspected illegal immigrants. But "this is not all about immigration," former solicitor general Paul Clement tells Reuters . "It's really about the relationship between the federal government and the state government." More»