I know you are all very surprised!
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court has ruled that jailers may subject people arrested for minor offenses to invasive strip searches, siding with security needs over privacy rights.
By a 5-4 vote Monday, the court ruled against a New Jersey man who complained that strip searches in two county jails violated his civil rights.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion for the court’s conservative justices that when people are going to be put into the general jail population, “courts must defer to the judgment of correctional officials unless the record contains substantial evidence showing their policies are an unnecessary or unjustified response to problems of jail security.”
In a dissenting opinion joined by the court’s liberals, Justice Stephen Breyer said strip searches improperly “subject those arrested for minor offenses to serious invasions of their personal privacy.”
Albert Florence was forced to undress and submit to strip searches following his arrest on a warrant for an unpaid fine, though the fine actually had been paid. Even if the warrant had been valid, failure to pay a fine is not a crime in New Jersey.
But Kennedy focused on the fact that Florence was held with other inmates in the general population. In concurring opinions, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito said the decision left open the possibility of an exception to the rule and might not apply to someone held apart from other inmates.
So the five (5) fascist Republican justices stripped more constitutional rights from average American citizens. It is imperative that ‘everyone’ give their vote to Obama in November. If for no other reason than to prevent a Republican president from adding more fasist Republican judges to the Supreme Court.
Uh…anyone want to bet even if one of them murdered someone in plain view of dozens of police they would not be subjected to this rule? Ever.
Bcz the real elites of the Powers That Be don’t get put in “general population.”
Yes, very surprising. Another reminder that the justices, once elected, can do damage to all of us for a long time… Half on the 44 Dems in the Senate voted to confirm Roberts in 2005. Another reminder that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two parties.