Just when you thought he couldn't top himself, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas today cast the sole vote in favor of illegal strip searches.
In an 8-1 decision, Justice Thomas dissented from the 8 other justices who held that a school in Arizona violated a teenager's rights when it strip searched her to see if she was carrying prescription strength Ibuprofen, a legal product.
The case involved Savana Redding, who was 13 years old when school officials at Safford Middle School forced her to remove her clothing and "
shake out her underwear,"
he search followed a tip from another student.
"What was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear," Justice David Souter wrote for the majority today. "We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable."