Thomas Strips Sense From Search

(CBS)

What kind of world does Justice Clarence Thomas live in? Alone among his colleagues on the Supreme Court, he declared Thursday in dissent in Safford v. Redding that an "abusive" and "humiliating" strip search of a middle school student for prescription Ibuprofen was actually a constitutional exercise by school officials who not only deserved immunity from liability but praise for their zealous dedication to student safety.

Less concerned about a forced and unnecessary intrusion into a young girl's pants and bra than he was about judicial intrusion into school safety policies, Thomas declared that the odious search was legal because administrators could have found what they were looking for. The majority ruling, he wrote, gives "judges sweeping authority to second-guess" school administrators trying to ensure the health and safety of students. His long dissent did not include a single sympathetic remark about the ordeal suffered by the victim in the case.

Fortunately, the other eight Justices on the Court live in the real world, where outrageous conduct by bureaucrats is frowned upon, and so they unsurprisingly agreed that school officials violated the Fourth Amendment in 2003 when they checked (then) 13-year-old Savanna Redding's bra and underwear for pills. "She was told to pull her bra out and to the side and shake it," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the majority, "and to pull out the elastic on her underpants, thus exposing her breasts and pelvic area to some degree. No pills were found." Other students were searched in a similar fashion that day.

"The content of the suspicion, Justice Souter wrote, "failed to match the degree of intrusion" into Redding's privacy rights. The school officials who conducted the search, he noted, knew at the time that they were looking for Ibuprofen pills (or other, equally innocuous pills) and not for weapons or illegal drugs. Nor was there any reason for them to believe that Redding (or any of the other students) was hiding any pills in their underwear. No pills were found in the earlier searches of the other students, none of whom were willing, as Redding was, to make a federal case out of the matter.

The lone woman currently on the Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, called the search "abusive" and "humiliating" and cited other relevant facts to argue why school officials should not have been afforded immunity from the lawsuit that Redding's folks brought. "Any reasonable search for the pills would have ended when inspection of Redding's backpack and jacket pockets yielded nothing," Justice Ginsburg wrote, and, "to make matters worse, [the school official] did not release Redding, to return to class or to go home, after the search. Instead, he made her sit on a chair outside his office for over two hours. At no point did he attempt to call her parent. Abuse of authority of that order should not be shielded by official immunity."

Which brings us back to Justice Thomas. Not only was he unwilling to acknowledge that school officials went too far when they searched Redding and her friends. He also continued his reactionary push for the Court to get even less involved in school cases like this; to return to the old and discredited common law concept of in loco parentis, a doctrine which gave school administrators virtually unfettered discretion to discipline and control students. "Preservation of order, discipline, and safety in public schools is simply not the domain of the Constitution," Thomas wrote. "And, common sense is not a judicial monopoly or a Constitutional imperative."

I leave it to you to determine where common sense lies in this case. I suggest it lies with the eight Justices who recognized egregiously unlawful conduct when they saw it and not with the lone Justice who couldn't muster a sentence worth of disdain over what happened to Redding. In the end, there is only one question you need to ask yourself: would you have been okay if it had been your child searched as Redding was, for the reasons she was, and in the manner she was? I didn't think so.

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(CBS)

Andrew Cohen is CBS News' Chief Legal Analyst and Legal Editor. CourtWatch is his new blog with analysis and commentary on breaking legal news and events. For columns on legal issues before the beginning of this blog, click here. You can also follow him on Twitter.

[m_moonshine]

The key concept here is Constitutional government.

The framers of the Constituition designed s government structure that they believed would prevent abuses of power.

But skeptics insisted that there be amendments that explicitly limited the powers of government, those ten amendments now known as our Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment, for example, the one that prohibits unreasonable search and seizure.

It is the job of the judiciary to determine whether actions and laws of other government agencies are Constitutional - or not. It is the job of the judiciary to determine whether anyone's Constitutional rights were violated, when a case is brought before the court.

Thomas seems not to fully comprehend what his job is.

Maybe that is why he is infamous for sitting through trials without ever - EVER - asking a question of either side about the case.

Worst pick for Supreme Court Justice - Clarence Thomas or Harriet Miers? You be the judge.

You couldn't do worse than this airhead.

[imnho]

I think part of the preoblem that uncle Thomas has is that he was not there to do the deed himself.

[dragyn30]

This school should be sued, what they did was deplorable.

It funny how children do not have any rights whatsoever in schools, yet schools can get away with violating their own policies and violating student and parents rights and nobody and I mean nobody holds them accountable.

The school officially should be charged with something that will make them think twice before they do something stupid again!

[eus109937]

What did they accomplish by searching for ibuprofen pills? Nothing. The little girls? rights were violated, no doubt. The school should have called her parents, period. The school went way overboard of their duties. They are there to educate children not strip search them.
There is no doubt that Justice Clarence Thomas is a threat to our laws and values of this country. The sooner he leaves the court the better.

[rusenseless]

What do you expect from a this man. Our first clue was the infamous fiasco with Anita Hill. He most certainly did violate her. But the Republicans defended him. Isn't it funny that the so-called "family party" seems to overlook the actions of their own? He should have been tried by the Supreme Court, not a sitting judge on it. As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!"

[briannorwood]

Another example of why Clarence Thomas is completely unqualified to be a member of the Supreme Court.

[dovestar]

Clarence Thomas has been called just about every name in the book over this case. And nearly everyone posting here has wanted to cuss him out. But there is a greater danger here. In a growing number of documents relating to children, the government is using the phrase, "the state's children". This is wrong. The Bible points out that children are a heritage unto the LORD and are not wards of the state. It is getting so bad that if you don't raise your children the way the state wants you to, the state will sieze them and find someone else who will.
In many of the comments here, nobody talks about the disciplinary issues facing schools on a daily basis. These kids know the limits and how to play the game. Unfortunately, it's the few that louse it up for everyone. While schools need to have strict policies in place, they need to balance those policies with the fact that the students' rights don't get parked at the schoolhouse door.
Have any of you thought or considered what would be the result if a parent strip-searched one of his or her own children because they had what they thought was valid reason to do so? Would this bring the child abuse police? Remember the legal doctrine of "in loco parentis", meaning, "in the place, or stead, of the parents". This is the authority that schools operate under and every parent knows this when their students enroll. Having said this, parents should be the ultimate authority of how their children are disciplined and how these issues should be treated. School officials are not the actual parents of these kids and as such need to be reined in on these matters. I have been one parent who did not trust their judgement with a blank check. No parent worth his or her salt ever should.

[kansas1946]

Yeah, I am really concerned about that "dangerous" ibuprophen. Although I am not fond of several of the justices, I think Clarence Thomas is a fringe lunatic and weirder than hell. He should have never made it onto the Supreme Court. To have our constitution in the hands of weirdo's is really scary.

[timothyjo]

this is a evil man .. he was acused of having child porn when confurmed said it was in his office because he was studing it evidence in a case at the time thought maybe true but have learned judges do not take evidence in there chambers . he should be impeached

[janedoe2231]

If the school administrators believed something illegal had taken place and nothing was found in the child's backpack, then why didn't they call the parents and police if they were so determined to pursue it further? School workers cannot take it upon themselves to operate as Gestapo law enforcement. Even our police have limits on what they can do.

An officer cannot stop you on the street and strip search you. What if your employer said they suspected you of theft or hiding something and wanted to strip search your underwear? Would adults put up with that? That the school thought it was okay to search a child's privates is an outrageous abuse of power over children. How do you expect a child to feel after such trauma?

We're lucky Thomas alone believed this is a good thing. What would it say about our society if we allowed something like that?