Strip-Searches Go to the Supreme Court

Recalling how leftists said Representative Michelle Bachman should be "stripsearched every time she comes close to the President," check today's story at the New York Times on strip-searches and the Fourth Amendment, "Strip-Search of Girl Tests Limit of School Policy." The plaintiff, Savana Redding, was 13 years-old when she was subjected to a humiliating strip-search under her school's "zero-tolerance" anti-drug policies:

The case will require the justices to consider the thorny question of just how much leeway school officials should have in policing zero-tolerance policies for drugs and violence, and the court is likely to provide important guidance to schools around the nation.

In Ms. Redding’s case, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that school officials had violated the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw said, “It does not require a constitutional scholar to conclude that a nude search of a 13-year-old child is an invasion of constitutional rights.”

“More than that,” Judge Wardlaw added, “it is a violation of any known principle of human dignity.”

But Michelle Bachmann's not worthy of that dignity, apparently. See also, Ed Morrissey, "Strip-searching teenage girls in school?", and Memeorandum.